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Who We Are
Australian Guitar Timbers is a family-run tonewood specialist founded by master craftsman David Linton in the Sunshine Coast hinterland of Maleny, Queensland.
We hand-select, mill and air-dry instrument-grade Australian timbers for luthiers and guitar makers worldwide, from first-time builders to master luthiers and production workshops.
Every back, side, top, neck blank, and fretboard leaving our workshop has been cut, graded, and catalogued by David himself.
Drawing on more than thirty years of experience in fine furniture making and custom milling, Australian Guitar Timbers exists to solve the single biggest problem faced by guitar makers everywhere: Finding truly reliable, premium Australian tonewood you can build a career on.
Our specialty
We work exclusively with iconic Australian species renowned for their acoustic properties, figure and stability, including Tasmanian blackwood, Queensland red cedar, Queensland maple, bunya pine, she-oak and camphor laurel.
Each log is milled on our Wood-Mizer LT40 hydraulic bandsaw for dead-flat precision, then air-dried for a minimum of two years before it is ever offered for sale. The result is stable, resonant, timber ready for the workshop.
Why choose us?
When you source from us, you are purchasing timber with the benefit of a lifetime of technical knowledge.
Expertly sourced
Every piece is selected with the benefit of a lifetime of woodworking knowledge.
Small-batch quality
We avoid the mass-market approach. We focus on limited batches to ensure every set is perfectly stable and ready for your workbench.
Ethically reclaimed
We specialise in rescuing Australia’s most iconic species from the chipper, transforming salvaged timber into world-class tonewood.
Ready for the maker
Our timbers are carefully air-dried and sawn for the structural integrity that master-built instruments demand.
Sustainable tonewood
Sustainability is non-negotiable at Australian Guitar Timbers. We work with salvaged, locally felled, and responsibly harvested Australian logs. Our workshop runs on solar power.
Global reach
For decades, Australian Guitar Timbers has bridged the world’s most acclaimed guitar makers with the beauty of premium Australian tonewoods.
Who we supply
Professional luthiers, apprentice luthiers, hobbyists, custom furniture makers, senior secondary woodwork students, and large-scale guitar manufacturers across Australia, the United States, Europe, Japan, and beyond.
Whether you need a single master-grade set for a commissioned build or a consistent bulk supply for a production run, we grade, photograph, and ship each piece individually so you know exactly what you’re receiving.
Trusted by local and international guitar makers
Built on craftsmanship, backed by service
Australian Guitar Timbers is more than a timber store. It’s thirty years of expertise condensed into every order. The kind of quiet, technical guidance that only comes from someone who has spent a working life behind a bandsaw mill.
If you’d like David to help you choose the right species, cut, or figure for your next build, we’d love to hear from you. Learn more about David’s journey from fine furniture maker to tonewood specialist.
David’s Story
Thirty years behind the bandsaw
David Linton didn’t set out to supply guitar makers. He set out to build beautiful things from wood. For more than thirty years, David has worked as a fine furniture maker, specialising in custom pieces milled from Australian hardwoods.
Early on, he realised the quality of the finished piece was dictated entirely by the quality of the raw material, and that the best material rarely arrived on a truck.
Two decades ago, he bought his first bandsaw mill, stepped out of the supply chain, and began cutting his own.
Even after all these years, I’m like a kid when I’m milling.
David Linton
That decision changed everything.
Cutting his own timber meant David could size each board to the job, saw for maximum stability, and reveal the figure, colour and grain hidden inside every log.
Today, he mills on a Wood-Mizer LT40 hydraulic sawmill, the same machine he’s run for more than fourteen years, using precision-ground blades built for the density of Australian hardwoods.
How a furniture maker became the luthier’s choice
As David refined his craft, a pattern emerged.
The timber he was cutting for cabinets and commissioned furniture was the same stable, high-figure, acoustically alive material that fine instrument builders prize above almost anything else.
Around five years into his milling journey, he began setting the very best pieces aside, not for a client, not for a commission, but for the luthiers he knew would one day come looking.
He air-dried each slab, graded it for instrument use, and slowly built a reserve of Australia’s finest acoustic timbers.
In 2005, that quiet reserve became Australian Guitar Timbers.
Rooted in Maleny
Australian Guitar Timbers is built on a farm in Maleny, Queensland, where David and his wife Karen run the business together.
Logs arrive, are hand-milled, sawn for stability, and then air-dried in the open Queensland air for at least two years before they’re catalogued, photographed and offered to the world.
Every piece is cut with the kind of tolerances that matter when a guitar back will eventually be planed to four millimetres because on timber this valuable, ten millimetres of variance is the difference between a guitar set and a costly off-cut.
David’s philosophy
David sees his role less as a supplier and more as a custodian. These trees have lived for decades, sometimes centuries, and carry a story in their grain that no two logs share.
His job, as he sees it, is to read that story carefully, cut it cleanly, and pass it on to the maker who will give it a second life. On a stage, in a studio, or in the quiet of someone’s lounge room.
That’s why luthiers from Europe to the United States, and hobbyists across Australia, keep coming back.
It isn’t just the timber. It’s the thirty years of knowledge behind every piece.
If you’re ready to build with Australia’s finest tonewoods, David would love to hear about your project.