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I had a friend give me 6 foot milled 1/4" thick plank of wood that he retrieved from his dad's workbench after his dad died. He is a classical guitarist and he really wanted to see it in a guitar. Given that it was dead flat and milled the 1/4" thick worked for me so I am going to use it in the guitar I am working on and other guitars in the future as a fret board.

I know it is a rosewood, when cut it has a smell as strong as the Brazilian I have used, to me it smells a bit different, where I smell more cinnamon in Brazilian this has more of a vanilla smell. Same intensity though.

Any guesses?

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I have some Indian rosewood that smells very strong and sweet. Different from Brazilian but very pleasant. That looks like Indian to me.

I'll guess Brazilian. It definitely has an element of vanilla to me. Chocolate vanilla baby powder, to be exact

Have you looked closely at the pores? Indian has smaller and more numerous pores than other rosewoods, and the color looks most like it. But Brazilian can look very similar.

In any case, I think you're set on fingerboards for a while

Looks just like east Indian Rosewood to me - a dead ringer to be more exact.

Thanks, I am good with it being East Indian. On to turning it into a fret board.

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On another forum I was sent this useful link
http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/distinguishing-brazilian-rosewood-from-east-indian-and-other-rosewoods/

From it "Brazilian Rosewood has another characteristic that can be leveraged in order to help distinguish it from other rosewoods: its heartwood extractives are not water soluble, and will not fluoresce under a blacklight."

So I performed a test between my sample and wood I know to be EIR, shown below. I put some shaving of the unknown wood in water, it did not fluoresce under the black light, I put some EIR shavings in and they turned a sickly green under the light, where the unknown shavings just stayed dark brown.
A sunlight picture

Also a little clearer in this picture, the EIR has an order of magnitude more pores.


The tests say Brazilian!

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That is cocobolo, not Brazilian. I hope that is not a disappointment, but hopefully a help.

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Thanks, I am happy with what ever I got.

_________________
http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Vanilla scented cocobolo? Though the color in the closeups does look right for cocobolo. Measure the density. That should give a pretty clear indication, since Brazilian is one of the lighter rosewoods, and cocobolo one of the heaviest.

Looks like EIR to me as well.


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According to the wood database link, BRZ is the only one of the woods mentioned to pass the black light test so I think you've nailed it.

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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.

Although I jumped to the black light test first there were other simpler tesst I could have done. This stuff sinks like a rock, and the sanding dust is orange. Also I have cocobolo bindings in my stash so I pulled one and sanded it a bit. It smell just like the wood I have.

I went back to the Black light test. Where the EIR lit right up shaving from this sample did not. But as I looked carefully I saw faint spirals of luminescence following the edge of the shaving curls. Given all of that I do think it is cocobolo.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

One of the things that makes me think that it's not BRW is the absence of the profound black ink lines. Could be coco and if it is be careful of the dust something like one out of ten of us are allergic to coco and others can develop sensitivities with repeated exposure.

Yep, no doubt that it is cocobolo. Yes, sometimes cocobolo smells sweet like vanilla, and can be fairly floral smelling, usually if it is well oxidized. The fresher cut stuff smells more of cinnamon, if it comes from Nicaragua or Mexico, the Guatemalan stuff smells like sweet barbeque sauce mixed with pickles when it is freshly cut.
I can tell by the grain/pores/color, I've seen so much of both brw and coco identification is easy.

_________________
Guitar Maker and Purveyor of the World's Finest Tonewoods
http://www.aaronhixguitars.com/
http://stores.ebay.com/A-Hix-Tonewood-a ... r-Supplies

Yep, sounds like coco is the winner. And now that I think about it, wow, that's a very wide quartersawn board! Too bad it's too thin for bookmatching. Well, probably. With one of those fancy smooth finish bandsaw blades, it may be possible to slice and get 2mm or so finished thickness, which is what I like for cocobolo anyway since it's so heavy.

Perfect thickness for fingerboards, but a bit of a shame not to utilize the width...

I'm working with a bunch of coco right now, and that most def looks like coco

Mike