Official Luthiers Forum!

[QUOTE=Howard Klepper]
The wood I don't trust is wenge.[/QUOTE]

Any reasons to give a newb like me Howard?

[QUOTE=Howard Klepper]The wood I don't trust is wenge.[/QUOTE]

Why is that? I know it is kind of evil to work with with respect to splinters, chip out and being stringy, but have you had specific problems with respect to it being unstable?

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Splits easily in my experience.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Thanks Howard!

[QUOTE=Larry Davis] Don, are you referring to the spidering similar to BRW? That is pigment figure and not grain. Look close and the two are not related..same in rosewood. I suspect unless ziricote suffers a physical "event" any spontaneous cracking might allready be in the wood same as many other woods. YMMV [/QUOTE]

I would have to mainly agree with that. Although the tightness of that figure seems indicative of quarter or off-quarter. The biggest culprit I've seen in ziricote are the really dark lines, which seem to have some natural weakness to them. I'm not an expert, but perhaps the pigment itself can weaken the structure. I know others who feel the same about those dark lines.
I think it is as I said, prone to having a lot of microfractures in the wood naturally, which cause us problems at unexpected times.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

[QUOTE=Howard Klepper] Splits easily in my experience.[/QUOTE]

BINGO......

Those of us who argue one side or the other about ziricote or other woods are usually arguing from experience. It could be that the relatively small sample of woods we have dealt with are good examples of the species in general, but maybe not.
It could very well be that a lot of ziricote has suffered from case hardening, or the trees are felled in such a manner as to damage them easily. Who knows? All we have to go on is our experience, for better or worse. The only way any of us are going to know for certain is to try these woods and see for ourselves.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Wenge and padauk can split very easily, but after completion I have had no troubles with either. Cant say the same for braz - I am 4 for 7 - had three backs develop hairline fractures over the first couple years, this after washing with CA prior to finishing. I think that the fact the guitar gets strung up and there are forces at work on the back contribute to the phenomenon. Stripped the finish off, worked CA completely thru the crack, adn refin - all has been fine ever since on 2 of 3, the 3rd has not been repaired yet (a students). Read in a Linda Manzer article from the 80s she doenst like braz that much - too unstable.

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

[QUOTE=Don Williams] Ahh....but Serge, as nice as mahogany is.... ziricote delivers sound that is Sweeeeeeeeeeet. Some things are worth the aggrevations.

[/QUOTE]

Thanks for writing that Don. You answered my question of why bother building with a wood that is temperamental.

Anyone have enough experience with Malaysian Blackwood to comment on it in this regard?

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

Todd, there are a couple of varieties Malaysian Blackwood as I understand it. I have some I'm about to start cutting into sets. I'll let you know what I observe.
Craif Sullivan recently built a beautiful guitar from MB for his son, which appeared on the cover of a recent Guitarmaker magazine. It's beautiful wood and sounds great. Therefore, I expect it to crack easily. See my theory in an earlier post....

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

[QUOTE=Don Williams]
It's beautiful wood and sounds great. Therefore, I expect it to crack easily. See my theory in an earlier post....[/QUOTE]

Here ya go Don, with your theory in mind, I just penned this poem eerrmm...I don't normally do poems so don't be too critical, must be gett'in soft

How close she did sail to the wind, so sleek, so fast. How furiously her wires did sing till she rode the reef to her aft. But as she broke apart, and the sea did claim all despair. How sweetly her wires did sing the swan song of one so fair.

Might put that on my label

Cheers

Kim

Wow, Kim, you are a real poet. That's actually very good.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

There was a young man from Nantucket
Who kept his guitar in a bucket
His pretty wood dried
And exploded, he cried
When he found he could no longer pluck it

Glad you liked it Ron, but I think Carlton's had more depth and flair Good one Carlton

Cheers

Kim

A few things...

Yes some Malaysian Blackwood can crack easily. I have built 11 classicals from it and only had two sets that cracked (both during construction) so while it is not a unstable as other woods, still remember that it is an Ebony species, some of whom are very unstable and some that are much less stable.

There are two things that contribute the tendency of a wood to split, one is the wood structure which can make it split prone, the other is the stability of the wood.

Species such as wenge, padauk, cedar, redwood and others tend to not have pores that are interlocked and the splitting in generally along the grain very evenly.

Other species such as rosewoods, ebonies, cordias (bacote and ziracote) and other woods tend to be more resinous, less distinct difference between summer and winter wood and tend to crack along lines that can have little to do with the grain as it is the internal tension (lack of stability) in the wood that is causing the crack, not a split.

Flooding a resinous wood does help to stabilize the wood and in the past when Martin was building more Brazilian Rosewood guitars they would routinely flood the entire piece of wood with CA to help stabilize. The solvents in the CA tend to dissolve some amount of the natural resins in the wood so that sometimes the wood after being flooded will look like it is sweating when it is actually dissolved resins (solids in the wood) being liquified and rising to the top. Note that this type of flooding does affect the overall tone of the wood in that it has a plasticizing effect. This is not bad but just something to realize...it is a tradeoff between stability so stable is almost always better.

As far as when a resinous unstable chooses to crack, alot of it has to do with the natural climatic changes and the effect it has on the instrument. If you build with flatsawn unstable wood with a high amount of internal stresses, cracking can happen at any time, even years later.

The majority of the Brazilian Rosewood sold today tends to be like this. I have guitars that I built almost 30 years ago from dead-on quartersawn wood that have never cracked and I have had other sets that cracked if I looked at them!

The old BRW would look to most as pretty boring stuff in that it looks much like a very dark EIR set but it is the difference in weight and tone that is different. Today I think that a bigger danger than using too much ornamentation in a guitar is the trend to build looking for over the top gorgeous but somewhat unstable wood. It sells better but will be more of a headache in terms of repairs and returns and will be much less likely to stand the test of time.