Flaxwood Guitars

Flaxwood is a Finnish manufacturer of guitars and instrument parts based in North Karelia. The company manufactures instruments from natural fibre-reinforced thermoplastic through a patented injection moulding process. Flaxwood was founded in 2005 following a research project on natural fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composites led by Heikki Koivurova. A prototype was developed initially in 2003 with the design input of Luthier Veijo Rautia and two years later Flaxwood introduced their first line of guitars. In 2011, they released a line of hybrid guitars.

Material
The body, neck and backplate of a Flaxwood guitar are made of a fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composite. The composite material, also known as Kareline FLX, was developed through a collaboration between Heikki Koivurova (industrial designer from Joensuu), Kareline (a Finnish manufacturer of composite materials), and the University of Joensuu. It consists of small wood fibres, in this case from recycled northern spruce, mixed with a thermoplastic bonding agent. The semi-liquid mixture is moulded into shape with the fibres set in a predetermined direction. This results in a uniform material with a density of 1 or 2 kg/cm³ (74906 lb/ft³) that can be recycled.

Manufacturing
Flaxwood produces and assembles their instruments and parts in Joensuu, Finland. The parts that come out of the mould are shaped with the cavities, pockets, joints and practically all the holes. They are then assembled and finished by hand with tools that are commonly used in traditional guitar workshops.

Flaxwood Series
The guitar models of the regular line come with approximately similar features and various pick-up configurations. The bodies are semi-hollow with a backplate and come with either a Gotoh 510UB hardtail bridge, a Gotoh GE-103B tune-o-matic bridge or a Schaller LP tremolo bridge. The glued in necks feature 22 medium jumbo frets, a 25.5" scale length and a 1-11/16" Tune-X Tuning System nut.

Instrument Components
Since 2011, Flaxwood has launched a line of components for music instruments such as bolt-on guitar necks, guitar blanks and fingerboard blanks for bowed string instruments. Some of the components are used by other companies like the German violin manufacturer Mezzo-Forte.

Notable players

 * Les Dudek
 * Bugs Henderson
 * Phil Palmer
 * Dean Parks
 * Waddy Wachtel
 * Dave Young