Wood Grades???

[jdpresto]

Would someone be kind enough to explain the process of grading tonewoods?

This may be a fairly substantial task, as I am not certain exactly what it entails, or if it is mostly subjective.

It's subjective as to how close a piece of wood comes to the ideal for that type of wood. In part, this is related to the suitability of the wood for use in a high quality guitar, such as its stability. For example, perfectly quartersawn rosewood with a tight even grain is more likely to be stable over the long term than flatsawn rosewood that has irregular grain and includes some sapwood or knotholes. The ideal also includes subjective notions of desireability/beauty for the given species. For example, people tend to prefer rosewood that is a rich dark color, does not have mineral inclusions or mineral or water stains, has a well defined, tight, regular, straight grain pattern, etc. For something like koa or maple, the grading goes according to the extent and depth and drama of the figuring and coloring in the wood.

There are all kinds of naming systems that people use, including letters as well as descriptive words. None of these are very scientific or standard from one place to the next, though there are similarities and most people, if given 5 boards would likely line them up in pretty much the same order of lower to higher grade.

There is very little wood that is ever found that meets all of the ideals and it commands impressive premiums since there are plenty of people who want it on their guitars. The closer a piece of wood comes to these ideals, the more you will pay for it. And these prices go up over time faster than inflation as demand increases, not only from guitar companies, but also fine furniture makers. Another factor driving up prices is that the supply of many of these woods tends to dwindle over time as all of the biggest and best old growth trees are cut down and all that remains are the younger, smaller trees or the plantation grown trees that have been grown so fast that the quality and density of their wood tends to be not as high as the slow grown "old growth" trees.

[ 07-02-2001: Message edited by: Jim ]

[JW]

While not an expert in this area or even a novice I am pretty sure that the wood is graded by how nice looking the pattern and how well the wood is as far as tight grain and rareness of grain patten. I find the most expensive guitars as in the PS models and special order custom models have the strangest and tightest grains. Like 300 series Koa while stunning still has small pits when you look at it close. K series is near flawless and PS series Koa is some of the finest you will ever see. Look on ebay for the next couple of days and you will see a PS14C that is of remarkable KOA it has almost a plaid pattern and is bookmark backed . It is absolutly stunning! I think looks plays the biggest part in the process. The better or stanger the patten the higher the grade. Or so it seems. My 2 cents JW

[jdpresto]

Is the "letter" grading system an industry standard, or just something that is widely used? Example being that I can see and understand the differences between the 3XXk's and the PS or K lines (and quite obviously so). But using an example: the 300k's are B grade Koa. The PS is supposed to be AAA or AAAA grade wood. Where does the spectrum begin and end? Would Martin or Larrivee grade woods in the same manner or give a particular piece as would Taylor?

Since the quality of tonewood is to absolutely crucial (and desirable) to guitars, I would have to believe that there must be a more scientific method of determining just what grade a wood is.

Hi Jeff. Yes there are well established lumber grading systems but they are not really applicable to the finer nuances of tone wood grading. For tone wood grading, every supplier has their own system. While many use a letter system, you can't really compare one supplier's AA or B or whatever to another's equivalent grade. And some suppliers use AAA for their top grade while others use up to AAAAA for their top grade. Some suppliers use adjectives for rating systems and some use numbers. For example, go to this website of a Koa supplier in Hawaii and you will see they use a combination of adjective grading "curly" and "plain" and 1 - 10 system for degree of figure in their "curly":
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Prom...ade_curly.html

[ 07-05-2001: Message edited by: Jim ]