Being a Tasmanian, I definitely an affinity with the islands beautiful woods.
I have quite a few favourite Tasmanian timbers for guitar-making and one of the stand outs is Celery Top pine, Phyllocladus aspleniifolius. In the rain forest its leaves stand out as being similar to ‘celery’ from where it takes it common name. It is slow growing and the trees can be up to 800 years old.
Its usage has been mainly in boat building and furniture making, but I love it for guitar making. I use it on the tops of my guitars and ukuleles where its straw coloured fine grain looks very similar to spruce. It is a tad heavier and quite stiff along the grain and therefore can be worked a lot thinner. To gain a similar flex to spruce it can be reduced in thickness by up to 20% or so.
When perfectly quarter sawn the growth rings are very fine around 20 to 40 annual rings per inch on average. The very fine straight grained lighter weight pieces I use for bracing stock.
Gary Rizzolo