Official Luthiers Forum!

I don't know if this is the proper forum to post this, but I wanted to share with everyone my recent find.

After seeing an ad in the classifieds for a back and side set from "the tree" I remembered a business associate who told me he had some boards from "the tree". He had to tell me the story because I had never heard of "the tree". Having never seen the wood I ask him if he would sell me a 30 inch piece so I could make a rifle stock from it. His answer shocked me....."no, I would never let this be wasted in a rifle stock". Now I have made a few thousand rifle stocks and some of them pretty high grade stuff and this kind of offended me.......that is until I saw a photo of a guitar made from "the tree", then I knew why he answered me the way he did.

Anyway, I contacted him and made arrangements to go to his place the past Thursday, Jan 5th. I came home with "the board" along with a plank of killer curly teak and a good bit of other woods including some junk gunstock blanks!

I wanted to show a couple photos to start with and will post more as I know more about what I am going to do with these boards. I will not be making rifle stocks from them though!

Comments, suggestions, doubts????

Mike

Well "The Tree" that is generaly spoken of was a very large Mahogany tree with very intense quilted figure. Most all of it was gone by the early to mid 90's. I belive Todd Taggart of Allied Lutherie knows some about this tree if you wanted to shoot him an e-mail. Never heard of a Teak tree know as "The Tree" however, but I'm open to correction.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

c'mon man!
Can't ya take better photo than that?

c'mon man!
Can't ya take better photo than that?

Got it, thanks Chris.
Mike I hope you actually ended up with some of "the Tree" it's beautiful stuff, I've seen a few pieces.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

We need to see a better photo of the mahogany to know if it is from the Tree. I have one board from the tree that I purchased shortly after the article appeared in Fine Woodworking back in the 90's. For the time, it was very expensive. Still have it somewhere. Not a huge board but enough to resaw a few sets of backs and sides. If I remember correctly the board is 6/4 or 8/4. It is a flat cut piece and the quilt looks better than what I see in this picture. But this might be just a bad picture.

It is my understanding that 3 billion board feet of high quality quilted and curly mahogany were cut from "the tree". It must be so, because if everyone who claims they have a piece actually does, that much lumber had to be harvested!!

There is a lot of great quilted mahogany out there that is not from the tree but will make beautiful instruments. In the 90's and early 20's, you could go through piles and piles of mahognay at a hardwood dealer and find a board or two. You may have had to go back many times, but eventually it was worth the effort. The sawyer and the seller were too busy to be bothered with separating it out. I haven't looked for any in years so I don't know if this is still the case. Probably not since mahogany harvesting as been restricted for some time.

Ken

I wanted to mention one other thing that I had forgotten about. When I purchased my small board from "The Tree", the internet was just getting started. All the communications between me, Fine Woodworking Magazine, and and a few hardwood dealers was all done by telephone, fax and snail mail. WOW!! Times have changed!!

Turmite,

Your mohagany board sure looks nice, but it still looks to me like standard quilted mohagany.

Here is a set I used a few years ago that quite similar to yours:




It will make awesome guitars, but I don't think it comes from 'The Tree'.

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

I'm thoroughly confused.

Turmite's board is some nice looking Teak, according to his photo captions. 'The Tree' was Mahogany wasn't it? Was there more than one 'The Tree' ?

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Jim Hansen

Ugh.. I misread that as 'is this the tree' instead of 'this is the tree'. I assumed it was the same board, or a board from the same set as the first picture.

/Sillyme

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Jim Hansen

Oh man, I didn't mean to make this so confusing....but leave it to me. There are two different boards, one curly teak, and the other the board from the tree. Yes, this is a bad pic and yes there is tons more quilt in the board, but this board was stored for at least 15 yrs in a wood working shop and had dust that had made the board look dirty. I don't want to run it through a planer, or sander so as to keep as much thickness as possible. The gentleman I got this from told me that if necessary he was pretty sure he could document the origin of the board. I can't reveal the whole story because it might reveal who this guy is, and though it is not in his possession, he had another 900 bd ft of this that I am going to make an attempt to recover for him..........and me!

I have a 44 inch piece cut off the full lenght so as to be able to get it in a Suburban and I will tweak that piece enough to show the grain better. It is a much darker red/brown that the example of quilted hog that has been shown. From all the net images I could find, I am 100% convinced this is the real deal.

I will have to say though, that I am very impressed with the piece of teak. It is a beautiful golden color with tons of figure. In this same buy, I got a large board of goncalo alves that other than some worm holes (Hey Chris you like g/a with holes too) it is very pretty wood. A .375" thick Paduak board that is about 8ft long by 8" wide. A piece of hard maple that is blistered decently that is 8/4 by 8" by 6-7ft long.

Mike

Filippo this piece has aged so it is a beautiful chocolate brown. When I first spotted it, I thought it was Ziricote. Yes, I sanded a piece of paduak next to maple........
once!

Mike

It was a HUGE tree! That's why it took so long to get it out of that ditch it fell in! That thing was over 10,000 feet tall with a diameter at the base of over 900 feet! Frankly, it was a real hazard to airplanes travelling in the area and what most people don't know is that it was actually taken down by the FAA. They had no use for it, so once it was cut down and no longer a threat to air travel, they simply left it laying there. If the Fed had known how valuable it was, they would have cut the national debt in half just by sawing it up into guitar sets!

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

These are two rather large images with my set of the stuff:

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Build log

Well I ran the short piece through a wide belt with 80 grit to clean it up a little and to get to the real color. I then shot some water clear one step urethane to bring the color out. Here is the results.

Does this look closer to what it is supposed to? Again, opinion, but the color looks spot on.

Mike

Here is a set of the real deal, from last century.

Last set in my shop...up for auction soon.

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Hank Mauel