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I have an opportunity to trade for 2 complete boules, nearly 300 board feet, of E. African Olive. A studio player friend's favorite guitar tonally is made from it, anyone with any practical build experience? Thanks, T.

No experience on my end - but can you post a picture ? Thats a lot of wood. Plan to sell any billets ? Will you be resawing it yourself ?

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It's this new idea from recent decades that everyone gets a participation award. - MUX

No photos yet, the swap offer is from a fellow custom furniture builder. I have a ton of nice QS cherry he needs for a job and he heard I was becoming quite enamored with guitars. African olive can be greenish to brown and at times spectacular, hard as a rock, harder than ebony. He hopes to send some pics tomorrow but hates the lifting. He tells me the QS pieces 12/4x9x120 are about 250 lbs each.

When it come to wood I am a hoarder not a seller, but this is a ton of expensive material. I have a beautiful Northfield 32 with a powerfed resaw setup, we resaw every day in our shop. T

Whoa 250lb quartered stuff? Sounds like a good deal to me, if you can afford it. Haven't worked with it, but after a quick run around the internet, it sounds like it would make fine guitars. I'd most likely be in for a set or two, if you do decide to sell any.

If it's the same as Hibdon sells I like it allot.
I've made guitars with it.
It bends easy,has no pores to speak of
and looks great under a finish.

Mike

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Mike Collins

There seems to be 3 similar species here. But characteristically similar unlike the mahogany family, I have agreed to this deal. I trade a lot of very practical wood for a much smaller stack of an impractical wood. Thanks for the response, I hope I can do this very interesting wood justice. T

The wood showed up this afternoon. Sliced and planed one bookmatch, I must say I think I won the lotto. Slowed the #7 to minimum for planing looks like it is finished. T

That's some gorgeous stuff. Are the white spots from a flash?

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

thats just beautiful. I think I would just finish it and hang it up on the wall as art

That looks like the tunnel to heaven or something. Nowonder olive trees are mentioned frequently in religious texts

So many awesome wood stashes discovered around here lately. When is it my turn?