Endemic means found naturally in one place and no other. Every timber in this instrument is endemic to Australia, and this constraint was the starting point when the instrument was designed. It grounds the guitar in a specific landscape and in particular biomes, and gives it a combination of colour, grain and density that departs from the spruce-and-rosewood grammar of today’s lutherie.Several of these species have been worked by Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years, for tools, shelter, watercraft and ceremony. That history is acknowledged here, and respect is paid to the Traditional Custodians of the Country these timbers grew on.
Materials
Athrotaxis selaginoides
Clear, crisp and exceptionally stiff for its weight, which is what a soundboard wants above all else. The same stock is worked down for the bracing beneath it.
Acacia melanoxylon
Warm and rich, with striking interlocked figure. A tree of great cultural significance, traditionally worked into tools, weapons and ceremonial objects.
Flindersia bourjotiana
Smooth under the hand and dimensionally stable, the two qualities a neck lives or dies by. A rainforest timber of the wet tropics of far north Queensland.
Flindersia brayleyana
Cut into the two blocks the box is built around: the heel block where the neck meets the body, and the tail block at the bottom of the rim.
Acacia cambagei
Among the densest hardwoods on the continent. Outstanding durability, and a bright, immediate response under the string. Recycled out of an old fence.
Nothofagus cunninghamii
The tiger striping is fungal figure in ordinary Myrtle, not a separate species. Unrepeatable, and different on every piece. One board runs through all four.
Eucalyptus melliodora
A swirling burl laid over Gidgee as the face of the head plate. Yellow box is the honey tree of the eastern plains, and its timber is hard and durable.
Acacia aneura
Dense, reddish-brown and tightly figured. The plate sits under the soundboard behind the bridge, spreading the pull of the strings across the top.
Notelaea ligustrina
Fine, dense and warm-toned. It cuts cleanly into small markers that stay crisp through decades of playing, and reads clearly against dark Gidgee.
Atherosperma moschatum
The dark heart is fungal colonisation, not a separate species. Heat-bent along the inner edges, it reinforces the joint between back, top and sides.
Athrotaxis selaginoides (King Billy Pine) is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as Vulnerable, and Tasmanian Government policy precludes its logging both inside and outside reserves. The soundboard on this instrument is entirely recycled timber – recovered from earlier use, not cut. The old nail holes are still visible in the plate and in the build photographs, and they were left alone. No living tree was, or lawfully could have been, cut for this guitar. Supplier and document references are recorded in the Digital Product Passport.
Suppliers
Capturing the provenance of the raw materials requires trusted and reliable suppliers, and for this instrument the timber was sourced from:
With thanks to Timothy Spittle for his help sourcing these timbers.
A boutique tonewood supplier of twenty years, based at Deloraine in northern Tasmania, cutting back and side sets, tops, bridges and fingerboards. Its stock comes from northwest Tasmania, northern New South Wales, Queensland and the midwest of Western Australia.
King Billy Pine, Tasmanian Blackwood, Silver Ash, Queensland Maple, Tiger Myrtle, Mulga, Native Olive and Blackheart Sassafras.
With thanks to Greg Hehir for his help sourcing these timbers.
A specialist timber merchant in Northcote, Melbourne, supplying carvers, turners, box and knife makers and instrument builders, and running the Melbourne Carving School from the same address. Its range is built on small quantities of speciality timbers.
Gidgee for the fingerboard, bridge, head plate core and heel cap, recycled out of a fence. Yellowbox burl for the head plate face.