Official Luthiers Forum!

Has anyone used Afromosia for backs and sides. I have looked in the archives and into recent posts and found very little information on this wood. This leads me to belive it probably isn't a good tonewood. I have a couple boards of quartered high figured Afromosia and thought it might make a "good looking" guitar. But "good looks" aren't near as important to me as "good sound" since I have a limited amount of time to work on making guitars.

Thanks in advance for any information.

Ken Hageman

Hi Ken,

I don't make acoustic guitars but I have worked with afromosia. If this is nicely figurd material can you use it on an electric guitar where tone is not as big of an issue? Just wondering.

Not seen much for B&S but Kramer guitars used sometimes for electric bodies back in the late 70's, so may be worth a try.
As with most tropicals, pays to take care when working it, I googled it and found - "Afromosia: irritant/eye & skin, respiratory/great/dust/rare"
Sorry couldn't be much help, maybe someone else has used it.
How's the tap tone?

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

You should be careful wth all woods, not just tropicals. There is a specific lung disease for mill workers who strip maple bark; another disease for inhalation of redwood dust; and there would probably be a disease for every species of wood if someone bothered to study them.

Owl Lumber in the Chicago suburbs used to have a printed warning sign on every bin of wood, but I think they took those down.