Figuring out the face...

I made it back to the shop today.  The glued up marine plywood is super solid.  There are no gaps or bubbles as far as I can tell.  It is essentially one piece of plywood that is 1-1/2" thick.  Here is a picture.  I put the pattern on top to show the scale.

Pattern on Body Block

The next step with the body is to find my face material.  The finished guitar body will be about 1-3/4" thick at its thickest.  I already have 1-1/2" of material with the marine plywood, so I am missing about 1/4" of material that I will use for my face/front.  This material could just be more plywood or some other non-pretty thing if I wanted to paint the whole guitar in an opaque colour.  In other words, if I am covering the whole guitar in solid finish, I don't need to worry about the prettiness of my body, just the weight and density and structure, etc.  But, I want a stained wood front and a solid opaque back.  The solid back is why I am alright with using plywood for the back.  I can't do the same with the front.  Stained plywood looks like plywood.  I want something better.  And so I am thinking of using maple for the front.  This is a classic choice.  Not just any maple, though; I am going to use figured maple.  Figured maple looks like this:

Tiger Striped Maple

This is a type of figure called tiger striped, curly, or quarter sawn (There are subtle differences between these three categories, but I don't know what they are...maybe just a naming preference).  There are other types of figuring too like quilting:

Quilted Maple

And birdseye:

Birdseye Maple

There are other types of figuring too, I'm sure.  Scientists really have no idea how figuring happens or why.  Loggers simply fell trees and a small percentage are figured.  They can be slightly figured or highly figured.  Sometimes they are assigned a percentage of figuring like 80% Birdseye or something like that.  Because figuring is random among trees, it ups the value of the wood.  It is quite beautiful, so I think it is worth the extra buck.  Personally, I like the tiger stripping for my guitar face, but I will entertain comments trying to convince me of another look.

I need to buy a piece of figured maple and mill it down to 1/4".  There is no piece kicking around the shop unfortunately (that would be very unlikely!).  Once I have it, I will cut it down to a rectangle the same size as my marine ply.  Then I will vacuum bag the plywood and maple together.  Only then will I be able to use the pattern to cut out my guitar body.