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Thread: Craigslist cocobolo....

  1. #1
    Registered User j. condino's Avatar
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    Default Craigslist cocobolo....

    Once in a while it pays off for all of that looking; I'll have a few new instruments coming out of this in a while. Out behind the barn past the kudzu from my granddady's uncle's third cousin twice removed who owned a cabinet shop back in the day before his first two wives died...a local guy was selling 20 year old air dried cocobolo logs on craigslist- enough to fill my entire pickup truck for 1975 prices. 'Gotta have a serious saw to cut into this stuff; it was so heavy it took 3 of us to maneuver it and safely slice off a test run on the big Yates Y30! Pictured is one of my Braziian rosewood & red spruce A5s for comparison. The color does not give a true sense of how beautiful it is. I also picked up several Honduras mahogany beams- 8' long x 5" thick x 14 wide for about what my weekend gig pays; plenty of extra if folks need some.

    j.

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  3. #2
    Kelley Mandolins Skip Kelley's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    James, that is awesome! Love that mandolin!!

  4. #3

    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Congrats! Amazing find.

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    Registered User Ivan Kelsall's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Cocobolo is an awesome wood,but as luthier Robb Brophy (Elkhorn Mandolins) will attest,it's pretty dreadful stuff to work. The dust is pretty toxic & you need to wear some sort of protection while working with it. However,the finished results can be astounding,
    Ivan
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  7. #5
    Registered User Tavy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Holy moly Ivan, the back of that mandolin is amazing!

    James: that's a great find and I shall look forward to seeing what you produce - I suspect the guy that runs the machine shop I use would have a coronary if I tried to push that through his gear

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  9. #6
    Registered User William Smith's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Great score! I've always loved the look of cocobolo ever since I was a boy!, My cousin a true artist grew up using so many different exotic woods for carving even targa nuts "not sure if I said that correctly!" I love the guitars I've seen that use cocobolo, I just wonder how they bend the sides! That is some stiff stuff, pry lots of moisture/heat?

  10. #7

    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Beautiful wood James.

    I enjoyed talking to you the other day about neck jigs, dories and boating. Thanks.

    Jon

  11. #8
    Mediocre but OK with that Paul Busman's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Ivan is right. Cocobolo is HIGHLY allergenic. A woodworking friend told me "there are two kinds of people. People who are allergic to Cocobolo, and people who aren't allergic to Cocobolo [U]yet. You'll be generating a lot of dust sawing up those logs- cover up as much of yourself as you can (I wear an old operating room gown)and use the best respirator you can find. If you can work outdoors, so much the better.
    Another bad news thing about Cocobolo is that the fantastic coloring and grain will darken with time to the point where it can end up looking pretty near black. I have a beautiful Glenn Schultz Irish Flute, and one of my own Eb penny whistles in Cocobolo, and they've darkened like that. The stuff is brownish purple when first cut, but the orange color starts showing up within a few days. Keeping it away from sunlight helps, but not forever. If you know of a way to keep Cocobolo from changing color, please let me know!
    In case you don't know, Cocobolo is in the Dalbergia genus and is one of the CITES prohibited woods which means you can't ship instruments out of the US, except maybe with some complicated documentation.
    If you end up with some pieces that are too small for luthier work, I'd be interested in some 1x1x13" for whistles.
    For wooden musical fun that doesn't involve strumming, check out:
    www.busmanwhistles.com
    Handcrafted pennywhistles in exotic hardwoods.

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  13. #9
    Registered User j. condino's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    You guys are funny; some of your posts sound like this is my first rodeo. I've been building with cocobolo since the early 1980s; luckily I have no allergy issues. The same fellow had a giant log of African blackwood for about the price of a Rogue mandolin. I am sensitized to that one, so no more of those cool mandolins I built in the early 2000s...

    bluegrasser: my experience has been this and most of the true dalbergias bend about five times easier than curly maple. Like everything, it takes practice but once you get the sweet spot on your pipe or bending iron at about 270 degrees, it bends like plastic. I very rarely crack or break the true rosewoods bending while there is are no shortages of maple failures.

    As much as anything, it is just fun to still be able to find things like this once in a while and share them with my wood nerd friends. I can remember being a kid and going to the hardware store with my grandfather where there were huge boards of Brazilian rosewood for around $8 per board foot. He would look at me with a frown on his brow, "What kind of fool would pay that much $$$ for awful smelling import crap?" It seems like in the blink of an eye we went from that to our current state of things; I'd like to have both the D. nigra and my grandfather back in the shop...

    j.

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    Registered User barry k's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    I am one that's allergic to cocobolo, Brazilian and some others....learned the hard way, several trips to ER and shots of adrenaline and epinephrine. My wife has to sand the stuff for me now.

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    Mediocre but OK with that Paul Busman's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Quote Originally Posted by grandcanyonminstrel View Post
    You guys are funny; some of your posts sound like this is my first rodeo.
    Sorry. I thought you might be familiar with Coco allergy,but thought that maybe someone else could benefit from the information.
    Got any links to pictures of your work?
    For wooden musical fun that doesn't involve strumming, check out:
    www.busmanwhistles.com
    Handcrafted pennywhistles in exotic hardwoods.

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  18. #12

    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Quote Originally Posted by barry k View Post
    I am one that's allergic ........ My wife has to sand the stuff for me now.
    Hmmm, honey, I'm allergic to mowing the yard, allergic to washing the dishes, allergic to taking out the trash, allergic to washing the car......................yep, I think this could work!

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    Registered User barry k's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Jeff if you get hives that look like cauliflower, I guess you could use any excuse. Would love for you to expierience it at least one time

  21. #14
    Registered User j. condino's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    I cut up one of the smaller logs today. You never really know what you are going to get when you buy wood in the log form. I've been skunked and lost a lot of money more than once, but today I was pleasantly surprised. This is some of that rare old cocobolo that looks more like clear well quartered old Martin Brazilian rosewood than a lot of the real Brazilian rosewood I see these days. I broke a big blade on the Y30; that was exciting! I finally understood why they made the blade guards out of 1/4" cast iron. Here is some of it stacked up on the sawstop. To say that I have excess would be an understatement.....

    j.
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    Registered User William Smith's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Quote Originally Posted by grandcanyonminstrel View Post
    I cut up one of the smaller logs today. You never really know what you are going to get when you buy wood in the log form. I've been skunked and lost a lot of money more than once, but today I was pleasantly surprised. This is some of that rare old cocobolo that looks more like clear well quartered old Martin Brazilian rosewood than a lot of the real Brazilian rosewood I see these days. I broke a big blade on the Y30; that was exciting! I finally understood why they made the blade guards out of 1/4" cast iron. Here is some of it stacked up on the sawstop. To say that I have excess would be an understatement.....

    j.
    Wow that is nice looking stuff, excess is an understatement, Nice! I figured it would be hard to bend but have only done curly maple a few times and well I'm no builder so of course I broke some Thanks for the info but I'll leave all that bending of exotic kool stuff to you killer builders, I'd fear I'd wreck it but I imagine when all of you started for fun or build to sell you broke a bunch of nice woods African Blackwood huh, Wood is like mandolins so much so little time and $$$

  24. #16
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Nice!
    I love cocobolo. I use it for the reel seats on many of the fly rods that I build. Beautiful figuring and very hard. Too bad for me that I missed it when I toured your shop this spring. I may have to take another trip to Asheville sometime soon! Can't wait to see the mandolins that you make with it! Thanks! Al

  25. #17
    Registered User MooglePower's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Beautiful wood!

  26. #18
    Registered User j. condino's Avatar
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Log #2 was a bit more interesting. Every time I buy raw wood in the log form, it is a gamble, so I tend to be conservative in how much I spend. You also need some serious equipment to have this kind of rosewood party. You can imaging how many times I have replayed the conversation with the seller while I'm trying to get out the driveway, he's almost begging, "10 more logs for $75 each if I bought the whole lot...", and keep repeating, "Dude, you just took all of my lunch money for the rest of the month...."

    Here is a small sample. Most this is more than I need and will go up for sale, but I'm thinking about building a matched quartet this winter if I ever catch up on the rest of things. Everybody always seems so stingy and cuts their wood to the bare minimum, but I decided to keep everything as oversized as I could manage. Any larger and it would have weighed about 400 lbs on the saw for the initial cuts! Log #3 is the biggest and still sitting in the corner of the shop waiting to be cut. I 'd bet a couple of folks around here looked around craigslist this week....have fun dreaming...

    I added the 1924 Gibson harp guitar for scale.

    j.

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  28. #19
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    Default Re: Craigslist cocobolo....

    Gorgeous!
    Are you going to leave natural features unfilled like you've been doing with the Brazilian wood lately?

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