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I'm putting the finishing touches on guitars 9 and 10. Number 9 is quilted maple back and tiger maple sides, and number 10 is bocote back and sides. I think what I enjoy most about building is seeing the tonewoods under finish (I French polish - sort of). Anyway, I've selected spalted sycamore for build number 11 and persimmon for build number 12. I know I'll like the sycamore, but I wonder if anyone has any pictures of a persimmon tonewood guitar that they have build or any advice for working with this wood. Can't recall seeing a persimmon guitar, but understand that the wood is in the ebony family. Thanks.

Hi Martin
Alan Carruth has. Here's a link with a couple pics.
http://www.alcarruthluthier.com/guitars/persimmonOM.htm
Ken

I'd love to see pictures of you back and side set. The only persimmon lumber I ever come across is way to small or too gnarly (or both) to get a back/side set from.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Makes a great fretboard if you can't find enough for backs and sides.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

That was an 'R&D Special'. Every once in a while I'll find a customer who's willing to let me try something out in return for getting a reduced price. Usually they have nicer trim, but this one was built to be a low cost as I could make it.

The guitar worked out very well. Persimmon is quite dense, hard, and tough. I did some breaking tests for side tapes after I made that guitar, and used some persimmon samples: they took twice as much force to break as Indian rosewood at the same thickness. This is the guitar I'd want if I was playing a gig in one of those places where they put chicken wire between the audience and the stage.

In terms of tone I was a bit surprised. The wood has a much higher damping factor than most of the rosewoods, and that often seems to result in reduced treble output. In this case, though, the trebles are fine, and it sounds very much like a rosewood guitar. I suspect the weight has something to do with that: damping probably only matters if the back is moving, and this was heavy and stiff enough that it didn't move much.

I wish I could find some more streaked persimmon, like the fingerboard. Most of it is white or grey/brown.

I/ve used P wood for FB and bridges , but would hesitate to use it for anything else . I was given a large block of persimmon about 4 years ago which I cut into FB and bridge blanks. I watched it closely .It seems that my blanks were moving all over the map, lots of checking , twisting , splits etc. I would stick with a more stable wood. When the wings of a persimmon bridge were glued using 310 g hide glue the thin wings abt 2.5mm on a uke wanted to curl from the excessive moisture introduced by the hide glue. Next time epoxy. Before introducing any water based glues on persimmon I would test it out on scrap samples first!

Ken,
thanks for the link. Alan's persimmon appears much more evenly colored than mine.

Bryan here are a couple of shots of the persimmon that I have (got both the persimmon and sycamore from RC Tonewoods about a year ago). The back pieces are just barely wide enough for the classical pattern I use.

Alan, thanks for the info. I did manage to get two sets from RC Tonewoods. And I build for myself so I pretty much build with what I'm interested in. If things work out, I'm planning on using sycamore from my other set for binding, and ebony for fretboard and bridge. Anyway, really enjoyed link that Ken forwarded to me. Was what I was looking for.

Thanks again guys,
Marty

Wow, I wonder if persimmons don't get very large in my neck of the woods or if I have only seen a small sampling due to only knowing one place that cuts it (and only cuts what they find). The stuff I have seen is much narrower that your and Allan's sets with much more of the black/gray in it. There also always seems to be voids near the black areas.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Bryan,
I was surprised to find persimmon this large. Like you, the persimmon I was familar with was in the woods on my father-in-law's farm in south-east Missouri (Perryville) just about 80 miles south of you; most of the trees I remember were fairly small in diameter. I suppose I picked this tonewood for sentimental reasons, since it was native to the area where my wife grew up. Since I grew up in north Texas near Dallas, I'll be looking for mesquite or osage orange next (got some oak already).

Maybe we Missourians just grow little squirrely persimmon trees. I bet all the other states are laughing at us. I'll defend your wife and father-in-law's honor if it comes down to it.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I happen to have built a guitar out of Persimmon (a jumbo) from that very same tree that you have. I'm very pleased with the tone. It's rich without the chime overtones that you sometimes get from the rosewoods. This wood was kiln-dried and then acclimated for a year in my shop after I cut the sets and before I built. It seems pretty stable. I have made a few persimmon bridges--it's relatively light. Those worked pretty well. I've used it three times for fingerboards. Those moved a bit with weather changes requiring truss rod adjustments. That was from a different tree than what I have now, so I'm going to try one more before I give up on it for fingerboards. I have used Osage Orange for bridges and fingerboards with no problems. I'm also using Persimmon for bridge and endpins--it's light and hard. I like it. Yes, Persimmon is American Ebony. The leaves look very similar to ebony leaves from the other hemisphere.

Thanks for posting all those pics. guys I guess our Pwood in Mo is puny. Probably not the right soil for tall/wide trees to make gtr back /sides.

I just got lucky on that tree. I asked a lumber dealer in Maryland to watch out for some Persimmon for me. He called, said he had some and asked me to come look. The trunk he had was 20 to 24 inches at the base, 18 inches at the top, and 24 feet long with no branches on the length. It must have grown up in a mature forest. I bought it--he quarter sawed and dried it. Some went to RC Tonewoods; some stayed with me. I've never seen a Persimmon tree that big around. I have seen a couple that were old and large, but the trunks were much narrower. The bark on them is distinctive when they get big.

One thing I learned about Persimmon is that the bugs like it. Even though we took the bark off right away, there were critters in the sapwood.

Bob,
thanks for providing the history on the persimmon; just makes it more valuable to me personally to know something of the history behind the wood. Can we refer to it as "the tree" or has that name been taken?

It probably ought to have its own unique name. Maybe "Percy"? or "Virginiana"?

The back on that one I built is four pieces: it's so white you hardly notice it, even close up.

We seem to get spoiled. Mahogany and Indian rosewood are two of the most stable woods out there, and it's not reasonable to expect everything else to act that well. All the wenge I've seen has had a tendency to crack, and one of my students is just finishing up one in ziricote that has started to crack already. Brazilian rosewood is notoriously unstable. The persimmon I have is actually pretty good in terms of stability, although most of it is pretty well quartered: I can't say how it behaves when flat cut.

So is ebony.
Persimmon does shrink a lot during seasoning, but does get more stable after it is dry. One of the most stable of the domestic dense hardwoods is black locust.

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John

John Arnold wrote:
" One of the most stable of the domestic dense hardwoods is black locust."

Which is also a great tone wood.