Official Luthiers Forum!

Anybody ever use these woods in guitar making?

Mike

Ive used Jatoba for 3 dreads.It's great to work with, bends readily and finishes really nice.Great color!!
Not as dark sounding as indian rosewood.
I'm a big fan.

Peter

I built one SJ with Jatoba and WRC and was very happy with it. I works well, bends very easily and made a nice sounding guitar. The Jatoba I had was about the color of Mahogany but had some nice subtle black lines running through it and was a lot harder and heavier than Mahogany. I would say that the tone is somewhere between rosewood and Mahogany, but I have only built one so you can take that with a big grain of salt. I have another plank and plan to resaw it soon and use it again.

Peace, Paul

Ive used Jatoba for a few instruments with nice results, but Ive never used teak. I have seen it at a couple suppliers, as I recall it was really heavy, i think.

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Nehemiah Covey
www.coveysacoustics.com

I love
Jatoba-I have planks 30 years old!!
I bought it when nobody wanted it-$1.00 a board foot !!!!
Some of it is birdseye looking-works great tool wise!
Unless you find mineral deposits !!!!!


What the heck is Cumaru ??

Mike

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Mike Collins

Cumaru is a teak.

I found someone selling Jotoba 8/4 for $5 per board foot.

Mike

Teak!!!!
it is oily??
hard to glue !

mike

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Mike Collins

I've made one from Jatoba and played a few others. It is hard to bend. No problems doing a standard shape in the Fox bender, but try a tight cutaway--it resists getting plastic, springs back a lot, and has a tendency to fail suddenly. It is very strong, though, and can be safely thinned more than most woods.

Sounds like chicken, but a little sweeter.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

and no pics... shucks...

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Here you go.

You can see the chatoyance and the interlocking grain, which can cause some problems working it, but not too severe. It is a good and underrated (i.e., cheap) tonewood. Bruce Sexauer has used it quite a bit.

This is the first guitar that I have built with an unbound fretboard, BTW. I was trying to keep price down for a working musician.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Beautiful guitar Howard!!!
I like the dots on the treble side .
Rosette is very nice!

Mike

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Mike Collins

Cumaru is often referred to as "Brazilian Teak" just as Jatoba is referred to as "Brazillian Cherry". I had a conversation with one of the original importers of this lumber a few years ago. He was telling me how these names came about. They had a difficult time marketing their lumber as Jatoba, etc, because no one had a point of reference to what they were like and no one would buy it. So they decided to call them by what they looked similar to and put the work Brazilian in front of it - then it started to sell. Some of these materials have been used for years in ship building (such as Ipe or "Brazilian Walnut) and other goods that required rot resistance and durability.

All of these "Brazilian" woods make great instruments. Very dense, great tap tones and look great. Just because they haven't really caught on as instrument woods doesn't mean you should use them. I have used Jatoba on several instruments - I love it - it looks great and sounds great as well. I haven't used Cumaru only because I don't like how it looks - kind of bland in my opinion.

If you want more info on these materials, they are described pretty well in the book "World Woods in Color" by William Lincoln.

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John Ressler