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I went to the lumberyard and picked out this piece which I got 3 jumbo sized sets out of. I paid 60 dollars total for the plank. Supplier says it's bubinga but I want to be sure because it doesn't look like the bubinga I remember. The density is measured to be around 0.6 or so (but I could be off because I'm doing a very imprecise measurement) and the grain is very straight. This is the back side I rubbed some mineral oil into to show you what it looks like. It's not as "red" as the bubinga I first worked on and the wood is hard, but not so hard that I had much trouble resawing it. When I first saw the wood I thought it was mahogany but it's heavier than mahogany but not heavy like Padauk. It also did not have the grain structure of any mahogany I have ever seen. Can anyone confirm if this is in fact bubinga? Note it was freshly sawn and the old surface is darker for sure... It has the color of bubinga but it does not look quite as pink (when unfinished) as bubinga I get from LMI. However it does look "right" from the wood database pictures...

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

That doesn't look like any Bubinga I've seen, but is your white balance off?

Bubinga is as dense, or denser than Padauk. I also think it stinks when working it.

Kevin Looker

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I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

It doesn't smell too good when working with it for sure... not nearly as pleasant as padauk. It's a little worse than mahogany but I know it's not mahogany because it's much harder and more brittle than mahogany. The light in the room is yellow so it may have thrown the balance off a bit...

The wood seems to leech some of its resin when wetted, giving a frothy appearance when I wipe the water off. I'm not sure what it is now... the lumberyard called it "African redwood" but it sure doesn't look like any bubinga I've seen. The wood has more of an orange-brown color when wetted than bubinga for sure.

Here is more picture to help... The wood really wants to bend, as in it's not very stiff at all. I've only thinned it to .09" and the wood just flops around like crazy.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Definitely not bubinga. Possibly sapele or jatoba.

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I know it can't be sapele because I have bought sapele from them before... and they have very distinct ribbon figure and the grain line is also different. Sapele is also fairly soft, enough that it's really easy to resaw and carve. This wood has about the same hardness as maple.

Now I'm really stumped... I've searched espen.de and they have bubinga sets that looks very close to this particular example so it's probably bubinga. I didn't really overpay for it because it's about the same per board foot as mahogany/sapele.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Nato.

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

Are you sure it's nato? I'm not even sure the lumberyard stocked it. It doesn't work like mahogany and I was under the impression that nato is quite a bit lighter, and this wood is fairly dense, more dense than mahogany or sapele but not as much as padauk. I cut it into backs/sides because the wood has straight grain, doesn't look bad, is hard, has decent tap tone (rings a bit when I tap it, even as a solid block) and wasn't too expensive. It's going into prototype guitars because previously I wanted to resaw some of the maple planks I have, however none of them are wide enough to make even an OM.

Update: I measured the density more precisely this time and it comes to around 0.72g per cubic centimeter, so it's in the rosewood range, and out of the density range of nato (unless this is a heavy example of nato), it's also much harder than mahogany (I realized this as I was writing on the wood with a pencil): I can easily dent mahogany writing on it with a blunt pencil but this one is like writing on stone. The Wagner Safe T Planer also had a bit of a trouble planing this wood... the drill press would slow down when taking a full width cut and as a result burned the wood a little bit. It could cut even Indian rosewood fairly well and it cuts mahogany like butter. The woodmaster CT of course was able to cut the wood without much trouble but I got some squealing (with the ripple pattern to show) on the cut which shows the wood is definitely not anything resembling mahogany. The lumber yard resawn it in half for me (so I can divide it up into backs and sides, since the wood was really thick and I wanted to maximize yield out of this wood) and their 36" bandsaw and 3" carbon steel blade cut through this wood literally like butter, with very smooth cuts that are only a little worse than the woodmaster CT.

I have a few ideas:

If it's not bubinga (or a very plain/straight grained version of bubinga) I am thinking it could be a Taiwanese wood known as 烏心石 in chinese (pinyin wu xin shi) which is fairly hard, has decent grains and is used to make premium furniture in Taiwan. The wood certainly looks a lot like it and if so it would be a really interesting thing to see how the guitar will sound.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Hello,

can you provide more, better pictures?

Cheers, Alex

Your picture from this post looks like bubinga to me.

Here are some better pictures:

One picture is of the back, one side of the back is wetted. The wood at this thickness is very sensitive to moisture so as soon as I wetted it the wood started cupping away from the wet side. It equalizes as soon as the water dries however. Other than that the wood is incredibly straight and stable... in fact I was able to resaw it into 3 sets just from the rough sawn state because there was little discernible movement. The resulting piece moved very slightly but quickly straightened itself out as soon as the moisture content equalized. I don't expect to have the back assembled for a while... instead will concentrate on bending the side and making the top.

The other three photos are of the end grain, magnified as much as I can. I hope this will help.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

That looks like Bubinga to me. I have it all over my house one of my favorite woods.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Hi ,
Possibly Aniegre ? (I think it's Anigre in english ?)

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Christophe Mineau
Let's make chips ! - http://www.labellenote.fr

Definitely not a goat. I'm certain of that.

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PMoMC

A goat would smell much worse than described, especially if it was wet.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Now, if it were roasting on a spit, basted with lemon and garlic....

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker