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Pause a moment to reflect in an old growth forest where time moves at a different pace.

The misty rainforests of the Pacific Northwest coast range are considered prime conifer areas with high growth rates. In The Siuslaw Forest in central Oregon, of which Cape Perpetua is a part, spruce and cedar have been known to reach 8-10 feet in diameter. Many of the biggest of those old giants have been long ago logged.

This is an overview of my experiences over the years of finding and cutting Pacific Northwest cedar and spruce trees for guitar tops and other stringed instruments. In the bigger picture of responsible use of natural resources, this is a chapter about a niche market which targets wood with specific qualities, carefully harvested from majestic trees which grew straight and firm for centuries under supreme conditions in only a few spots on the planet. But trees do not live forever. In this slow march of time, to end up at some point as the soundboard, the voice, of a custom built guitar is a story of several exceptional factors.

Despite recent technological advances in logging operations, the old ways of handsplitting and custom sawing remain proven to yield the best music wood.