Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi there, first post here. My name is Miguel and was recommended this forum for this very question. But now i´ve found it, i hope to stay here for a while. it shure looks promising!

some intro (feel free to skip it):
so, after some very long time flirting with the idea, and finally prompted by unemployment, i decided to take a go at building a guitar. i´ve played the guitar for some years and always loved the wonderful material that makes most of it, wood. so i hope this will be a rewarding endeavour. i´ve already bought some books, but am in the very first steps of the journey.

which leads me to the question: i found some old brazilian rosewood gathering dust in an old man´s warehouse and decided to buy it. the problem is it´s not quartersawn and has bits of sapwood on some plates. so, i wonder:

1 - can i make backs and sides (more problematic, i´d guess) from flatsawn BRW?

2 - can i use BRW with some sapwood in it in guitar making?

thanks very much in advance for your attention,

greetings from Portugal,
Miguel.

P.S. - please excuse my english. i´m trying to get better.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Hi, fellow Newbie. Brazilian is not where to start. Set the boards aside till you are ready for treating rare wood right. Or sell it to pay for the boatload of tools you will need. Start with Walnut or Mahogany. Evil Kinivel did not start off with Snake River Canyon

You can build with flatsawn wood that has sapwood. I like the sapwood guitars better myself.

If its wood, you can build a guitar out of it .. if its not, you can build an Ovation

People have built guitars out of pretty much anything .. quartered, flatsawn and everything in between .. and that goes for woods and non woods alike - paper mache, carbon fibre, bamboo, plywood of all sorts, chipboard, and animal shells ..

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Hi, and welcome!

All these replies are right. You can build with anything you can find, wood or not. But it's a wide view of the question. Maybe you want more specific answer...

Well, we CAN build with flatsawn, but, do we WANT to build with flatsawn? Personally, no... I'll prefer a perfect Q-sawn set of Indian rosewood to a flatsawn BRW.

That's all about stability.
Flatsawn will warp and distort more than Q-sawn, both when you work it and when the guitar is finished.
It's a choice, all about you.
It's the same thing for the sapwood. You can do it, but the difference of density and structure between sap and heart can be problematic.
It's also, always, a case-by-case... you can find a piece with lot of sapwood that is verry stiff and don't seem to cause anyway problem... and you want see perfectly q-sawn stuff that is warping...


Seriously, all can be done, and it's all up to you to try, to see and to choose.
Welcome to the fantastic world of guitar making!

If I can add my 2 cents, I would also suggest you to begin with something else, to gain experience. And, personnaly, I would keep this brazilian for bridges blanks, rosettes, headplate, inlays, etc..

Good Luck!
Francis

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Francis Richer, Montréal
Les Guitares F&M Guitars

wow! thanks a lot for the replies. Unfortunately, i´m in an hurry ATM, so i could only read this rather quickly. I´ll give it a more thorough read later on, for now i would just like to say : thank you all!


cheers,
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Miguel,

Sweet find! Can you post some pictures? Would be great to see what you've found.

I'll also second the notion that you definitely don't want to build your first guitar with Brazilian. Unless you build it under the instruction of a very experienced builder, you'll not likely produce an instrument that's worthy of such valuable and irreplaceable wood.

I've got a few sets of Brazilian, and I've built 8 guitars, and I don't feel ready yet to build with my Brazilian. I think I need at least 4 or 5 more before I'll have gotten comfortable with some of the processes, so that I'll have a guitar that's worthy of it. Is Brazilian really that much better than the other available tonewoods? Well, that's worthy of lots of debate, but it certainly is more scarce than many other very good tonewoods, so I'd keep it for use when you are confident that you'll be making the most of it.

Get a set of Indian Rosewood, practice on that - after you've built one, you'll probably get hooked and it will be the first of many.

Keep us posted!

I amazes me that there are other people from other countries that can write better English than most of what I see from native English writers and speakers. Your English is perfect!

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

Wat?
Me 100 precent amerecan and speek good inglish.
I resemble dat remark!

Miguel,
Oh that's terrible having all that BRW. You should get rid of it and send it all to me...........lol

Just kidding. Welcome to the OLF

Hutch

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

BRW, especially when flatsawn, is harder to work than most other suitable woods. Also, are you sure you have the ability to bring out the most of that set? I doubt it. What you have there is some very valuable lumber. Sell what you can, and you'll be able to make more guitars. Hang on to it, and you may not build any depending on how much you have on hand now.

I found some BRW backing boards recently & even though it's tempting to cut it up I'm going to just contemplate the find. Do not sell your piece. In a year or 2 or 5 you will look at it differently for how to use it.
MM

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Mike McNerney

well, thanks. It must be because i use a dictionary...

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I will, when i get to the warehouse. shure! been short of time with christmas stuff and an 18-months baby lately...

cheers!
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

OK, got a little bit of time now.

I´m planing on using the wood, but not on my first guitar. I still don´t know if it´s rubbish or a good find, but i´m happy i can use flatsawn on backs. What i don´t know is if i can resist using it for a long time... because i want to build a guitar that i like - even if it´turns out terrible - and i already have a walnut guitar. maybe i´ll have to swallow these words later on, who knows?

regarding it being very scarce, i´ve been doing some wood searching here (Portugal) and i still could find some (alleged) brazilian rosewood. Many old warehouses have some leftovers from the "good old days"... so i guess we´re a bit lucky, you just have to check if it´s enough quality for guitar building (which i don´t know how to evaluate still).

once again, thanks all!

cheers,
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I say you might only live once,So do what you want to do.I`ve seen some killer first guitars and some real first dogs.It just depends on who`s doing it and how much previous experience you`ve had working with wood.For me building a guitar isn`t much different than building a nice piece of furniture or cabinetry.You`ve pretty much have to know how to make stuff fit.I know a lot of folks may not agree with that,but I`ve been involved in some furniture builds that have been more complicated than building a guitar.As far as sound goes,that also is not that hard.You can learn enough here and other places to make a really nice first guitar.So all I`m saying is you know yourself better than anyone does.If you honestly feel you can do it .GO FOR IT!!!
James

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

on second thought, i have a photo on my mobile phone. the white balance is wrong and the flash turns it whiter, but here is a photo of a piece of it: .

Cheers!

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

hi again!
so, i was wondering if you guys think this is brazilian rosewood? a fellow member friendly said it could be pau-ferro instead. he told me to cut it and smell it, to check if it´s rosewood or not (thanks for the tip!), but i have all the wood in the warehouse (50 miles from here).
the only thing i know is that the wood is oily and - by my own measurements - it has a density of approximately 85 kg/m3. i know that BRW colour depends on the years since it´s been felled and composition / pH of the soil and sun exposure ( alkaline soils and more shadow produce a darker, more purple timber). so, i´m curious...

any help?

thanks,
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Brazilian can look like almost anything, but it pretty much all smells the same - a very rosey, bubblegummy smell when freshly planed or sanded. I don't think Pau Ferro has much smell at all, so you can tell pretty quickly. (Am I wrong? My one set is buried too deep in the pile to go check.) A lot of the rosewoods have pretty distinctive smells.

The smell test is definitely the place to start.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Hi Jim,
To me Pau Ferro has a spicy smell when sanded and Brazilian rosewood has a sweet flowery smell. To me they both smell very nice, although some people react badly to Pau Ferro so it requires good dust control. If you would like to check it out sometime I can bring a piece by.

Brazilian rosewood oil is a major ingredient in Chanel No. 5 perfume.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/inter ... _r=1&8hpib

"'That bouquet is unmatchable, and it makes people act strangely,' said Paulo Tarso de Sampaio, co-author of the book Bio-Diversity in the Amazon and a scientist at the National Institute for Amazon Research in Manaus."

I third or fourth or fifth the idea of saving the wood - either for a later guitar, or making bridges, headcaps, and fingerboards from it.

thanks guys! now this is what i call a friendly forum!

i´ll rasp-it, smell-it and probably save it!

cheers,
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

That is a completely different plant that is also called Brazilian rosewood. The stuff we make guitars from is not used to make perfume.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

As Jim said, BRW can look in many ways, but the chances for that plank are pretty slim. Does look a lot like Pao Ferro to me too. As for the smell, when you cut or scrape Braz the smell can really slap you. I have some pieces where it is faint and you need to put the nose real close, but usually it is strong. I made a guitar with a headplate of Braz which smelled so strong I could sense it when getting close to it to change the strings (in the white of course). All other hardwoods I handled so far, that have a smell, are a factor or two below braz in strenght, and the only stronger wood was cypress. When worked that stuff can fill the entire house.

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Build log

Hello,
I would say the wood pictured is not Dalbergia Nigra / Brazilian Rosewood. For me it looks a lot like Machaerium scleroxylon / Pauo Ferro /Caviuna /Santos Rosewood.

I always thought Channel No.5 has to do with Brazilian Rosewood???? My beloved girlfriend is using it, and for me I find something in common about the smell?

Merry Christmas, Alex