Official Luthiers Forum!

Folks I am THRILLED to announce to you that Alaska Specialty Woods has become a sponsor of the OLF!
I have known Brent Cole for years and I could not be happier having him and his family as part of ours.

Brent and I have been talking for a few weeks and we have some fun surprises in store for the OLF in the up coming months.

Take a moment, stop by his site, http://www.alaskawoods.com/ Notice the wide range of products available, their commitment to sustainable forestry and responsible wood use.

WELCOME ALASKA SPECIALTY WOODS!

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Support the OLF! Bookmark our STEWMAC link Today!
Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Welcome to the party!

Brent, glad to see you here and thanks for the support. I'll be checking out your site soon!

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

In the past I purchased sight unseen 2 sets of extreme bearclaw sound boards from Brent after having a lengthy conversation on the phone with him. He was a pleasure to deal with and the tops were some of the most beautiful I've ever seen. +1 for Alaska Specialty Woods

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Bobby Masten

Anyone looking for Sitka ...........this is the place.!!
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

+1 brent

I get all my Sitka tops from Brent and he is a rare guy- always helpful and finds me exactly what I am looking for. Welcome!

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It will probably be alright.

Even in Australia, we buy our Sitka from Brent!

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Martin Taylor
http://martintaylorguitars.com.au

Thank you for the warm welcome. It's a pleasure to share time with Craftsmen and artists. I always enjoyed my visits to the luthier gatherings of ASIA and GAL. The friendliness, musical talent, the craftsmanship and artistry is very pleasurable. I hope my knowledge and experience with the Forest, the acquisitions of timber, and production of products from that timber will benefit all with the desire to know. And I look forward to also learning from others. I only hope I have time to both offer and take it in.

A little bit about us. Some of the latest news is, after 20 years, 18 of those years in a little lean-to shack of about 1000 sq ft, we are in our newly constructed a 2 story,15,500 sq ft production/warehouse facility. A facility that I designed with local engineering help. The building is an engineered steel structure that was 6 years old when we purchased it in 2007. We disassembled it and re-designed its purpose. The project took 4 years once we actually began clearing and and excavating our piece of the side of SunnaHae Mountain in 2010. The facility is heated via thermal floor, by a dual fuel waste-wood/waste oil fired boiler. Equipped with 3- 42" bandsaws with carriages, the band-mill, the wide belt sander, planers, sharpening equipment and 2 dry kilns[ 1-20' and 1-40'] and hundreds of tonewood products for 1000's of instruments and every acoustic instrument imaginable All of it produced from only salvage sourced old growth species native to our beautiful SE Alaska Rainforest home. We are famiy owned and operated by 2 generations of Cole's.
I hope you will like us at our Alaska Specialty Woods facebook page. It's only for wood and our doings that pertinent to our biz and way of life. We'll post new products of rare finds and sales there too.
https://www.facebook.com/AlaskaSpecialtyWoodsInc .,
And this just in... A news story from a radio station in Ketchikan, Alaska, about 80 air miles east of Craig. Features us and customer Gray Burchette from NC.
click on th adio link.
http://www.krbd.org/2015/09/03/pow-wood ... worldwide/

Kindest regards,
Brent Cole Sr
Founder/President -Alaska Specialty Woods Inc.
Since 1995

Also Ladies and Gentlemen, here are other stories and videos about our operation.
All were produced before we moved into the new factory.

At Bedell Guitars: Their Seed To Song project, http://bedellguitars.com/seed-to-song/t ... ialty-wood

Another here http://www.localtongasstimber.com/team/ ... lty-woods/

Sitka Wild Article: http://www.sitkawild.org/just_listen_br ... art_series

KTVA news out of Anchorage, Covering The Big Thorne Timber sale.
http://www.ktva.com/guitars-mandolins-u ... iness-615/

Here is a radio interview done a couple weeks ago. The audio link is under the first paragraph.
http://www.krbd.org/2015/09/03/pow-wood ... worldwide/

Nice interview. I hope it continues to go well for you.

To be perfectly honest, things are not going well. After 20 yrs of growth and finally building the factory, sales have just dropped off something terrible. No more Purchase orders for the rest of this year from our regular large purchase customers of the last 5 years. And smaller orders havee ben slow too. That is the main reason I have started sponsring this forum... to drum up sales of our 100% savage sourced old growth tonewood products.

I'm a small, hobby builder--sort of a "chump change" customer for Brent. But he always treats me like I'm his most important customer. The quality of his sitka is excellent and the quality of his service is far beyond criticism. That's my experience with this fine company. Give them a try. I don't think you'll be disappointed in the least!
Patrick

We love all orders. We respect all customers. And we treat others as we like to be treated. I hope that our investment to sponsor this forum is recoverable with sales. We cannot spend what we do, to support this group without return. So the only way I can know if we can afford to keep on doing this is if anyone makes a purchase through our online store, PLEASE mark the referal box that says OLF or type it in the "other" line. So far I only know of one order. I hope there have been others. A biz cannot spend more than it receives and stay in biz. You guys know that. Too bad gubmnt doesn't realize this. So PLEASE PLEASE let us know, so we can stay here.