A lot can be said (and fabulated) about the tonal qualities of the various types of wood used in guitar making, alas, having not much personal experience in this field, I admittedly based my choice largely on visual qualities.
In particular I came across this neck piece of Ziricote, a tree I had never heard of before, but immediately liked due to its intricate markings:
![](http://www.glui.de/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/IMG_0087-2-1024x210.jpeg)
![](http://www.glui.de/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/IMG_0087-3.jpeg)
As I prefer single-type wood guitars (save for the fretboard) I then faced the much harder task of finding a large enough Ziricote piece for the body. Most dealers said this was not possible, but after much back and forth Nebelheim Tonewood procured a plank that seemed promising (thanks much to Manuel Wemmer for helping with this):
![](http://www.glui.de/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/IMG_0088-768x1024.jpeg)
Note how the dark core is surrounded by lighter wood.
Of course this wasn’t wide enough for a one-piece body, and even a two-piece didn’t pan out because I had to work around a crack. So I ended up with this cutting plan:
![](http://www.glui.de/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/IMG_0095-768x1024.jpeg)
Put together like this (Photoshop simulation):
![](http://www.glui.de/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Zirikote-Schnittmuster-2b-1024x729.jpeg)
With an overlay of an early design sketch:
![](http://www.glui.de/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Zirikote-Schnittmuster-2c-1024x524.jpeg)
I then took this to a local shop in Berlin to do the actual cut and paste. Thanks much to Guitardoc and Anthony Schneider in particular for the help!
I forgot to take a picture of the raw assembled block, so here’s one at a later stage where the upper curve has already been cut out:
![](http://www.glui.de/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/IMG_0122-1024x768.jpeg)
More on the machine in the background in the next post