I find the idea intriguing of growing a guitar from a seed. Like, imagine instead of building a guitar for 100s of hours — you make a framework or template that a tree can grow around or inside of.
I got the idea from hearing about a hobby called “arborsculpting,” which is basically shaping a tree as it grows into functional objects, like a chair. It surprised me how much control you can actually have over the way a tree grows.
Anyway, the main issue with this idea seems to be the time it would take. Even using the fastest-growing tree in Europe (willow), it would probably take 1–2 years to grow a guitar. But willow is a very weak wood, so it likely wouldn’t be able to hold much string tension.
So I looked into more exotic options, such as bamboo. Bamboo is the fastest-growing plant and it’s also very strong. However, from my research, bamboo might grow fast, but most of the time it stays dormant in the root system, then randomly shoots up a fast-growing stalk. Bamboo is also not nearly as shapeable or able to fuse into itself the way wood can. So the aesthetics wouldn’t be very nice.
I’m putting this out there to see if any of you engineers have ideas or out-of-the-box solutions for the “growing a guitar from a seed” idea.
Mattias Krantz
I find the idea intriguing of growing a guitar from a seed. Like, imagine instead of building a guitar for 100s of hours — you make a framework or template that a tree can grow around or inside of.
I got the idea from hearing about a hobby called “arborsculpting,” which is basically shaping a tree as it grows into functional objects, like a chair. It surprised me how much control you can actually have over the way a tree grows.
Anyway, the main issue with this idea seems to be the time it would take. Even using the fastest-growing tree in Europe (willow), it would probably take 1–2 years to grow a guitar. But willow is a very weak wood, so it likely wouldn’t be able to hold much string tension.
So I looked into more exotic options, such as bamboo. Bamboo is the fastest-growing plant and it’s also very strong. However, from my research, bamboo might grow fast, but most of the time it stays dormant in the root system, then randomly shoots up a fast-growing stalk. Bamboo is also not nearly as shapeable or able to fuse into itself the way wood can. So the aesthetics wouldn’t be very nice.
I’m putting this out there to see if any of you engineers have ideas or out-of-the-box solutions for the “growing a guitar from a seed” idea.
2 days ago | [YT] | 2,872