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Permalink Reply by gary herget on July 16, 2014 at 12:38am

I use door skins on all my LP Reso's. If you drive around you can find them in peoples front yard with free signs on them. It takes some internal bracing but works well and plenty of material to work with if you happen to make a mistake.

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Permalink Reply by JL on July 16, 2014 at 1:00am

Used hollow core doors $5-$10? sounds like an excellent way to get thin hardwood veneer plywood for cheap.  I put an old door on a pair of saw horses as my assembly table when doing projects in my garage workshop.

Maybe the wife will like them less unkindly if you break them down and store a stack of door skins instead of whole doors?

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Permalink Reply by brdfrd on July 16, 2014 at 1:33pm

Figured it probably wasn't an original idea, but good to hear it seems to be a good one.

I would expect to do some bracing, at this point I'd just about be making a "real" guitar, so why not do it?

Time to start watching for doors...

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Permalink Reply by ChickenboneJohn on July 16, 2014 at 6:35pm

Don't buy them, the're pretty easy to come by thrown away in skips (UK) and dumpsters (USA) as long as you get to them before the rain.

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Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on July 16, 2014 at 11:04pm

If you have a home studio try standing your monitors on one.
And prepare to be amazed....

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Permalink Reply by Mark Lindsay on July 17, 2014 at 5:33am

What Chickenbone John said. Since you're on Craig's List already, keep your eye on the FREE, BARTER, and MATERIALS sections. Hollow core doors pop up there for free quite often. They're big, bulky, and folks without a truck just want them gone.

Most door skins are made from 1/8" to 3/16" thick luan (pronounced loo-on) plywood, but you do come across other woods on occasion. There's not a thing wrong with luan either. Lots of guitar builders use it, The overwhelming majority of "all wood" cigar boxes with paper labels are made of luan plywood. The bottoms of most boxes are luan plywood too.

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Permalink Reply by George Mesheau on December 27, 2014 at 2:05pm

Realize this is a fairly old post, however. We have a ReStore near us and they sell used interior doors for $5.00. you cant beat that for sure... also in the spring I see hundreds of them out for trash on pic up days. mostly the folding closet type..

FYI ReStore is a place that accepts used items and resells them and the profits go to  Habitant for Humanity.. Believe they are in Canada and the USA..

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Permalink Reply by Gary Ross on December 28, 2014 at 3:04am

If you have a good wood working store like we do in Chicago land ,Owl Hardwoods in Lombard. They stock sheets of various door skins.I made an 11' solo canoe stich and glue it was $16 for two 4x8 sheets awhile ago. The wood was red meranti 1/8".Eliminates the mess of tearing apart the doors glue and paper bracing and stuff to scrap.

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Permalink Reply by George Mesheau on December 28, 2014 at 8:22am

that is a good price.. I think the largest I see around here is like a 24x48 inches and its like 16 bucks..and  some places don't have 1/8 only 1/4 which is useless to me.. oh well.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Lindsay on December 28, 2014 at 10:42am

Ask for door skins. Sometimes they're in the lumber section of the home improvement center, other times they're over with the doors and windows. Most good lumber yards carry a decent stock of them as well. Some can order them in a variety of different species, but usually just stock plain luan.

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Permalink Reply by Smoke on December 31, 2014 at 10:05am

So far it has been my experience that there are only the limitations of imagination when it comes to doing these builds. Go for it and share your success 8-)

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