I've only built one with Ziricote, but I love it as well. My first concern with the set pictured is it looks decently flatsawn- which may exacerbate ziricote's inherent problems.

When I built with it, I flooded all pieces with thin CA prior to bending/jointing. This helps with stability. It's a nasty process and adds some noxious fumes to the bending process (plus will require barriers between the wood and blanket/slats), but helps to fill any small internal issues you can't see.

I'm another fan of ziricote. I've only built one guitar with it so far. The back and sides set I used presented none of the problems on your list, but maybe I was just lucky. The only thing that stood out was that the sides took more effort to bend on my hot pipe than other woods. I pre-treated the sides with SuperSoft and they bent without cracking or cupping.

Here's a photo of the wood I used to compare with the wood you have:

I've only built one with Ziricote and was fortunate to have a set that bent like butter. Would love to use it again.

Thinned sides to approximately .080"
Light misting with water on both sides
Wrapped in kraft/butcher paper
Sandwiched between two metal bending slats
Heated my silicone blanket to roughly 300°F
Was patient with the preheat
Bend smoothly with no cupping/splitting or creasing.

Planing the back/sides to thickness was the only area I needed to exercise caution. Use a very sharp smoothing plane on a skewed angle or cabinet scraper as its very hard and almost crumbly. If my plane was the least bit dull I would get slight crumbly tear-out.

With a sharp plane or fresh cabinet scraper it finishes like glass.

Thanks for your advice. How did you like your results? Was it worth the trouble?

Well worth the insurance to flood it in my opinion (same goes for BRW and others that tend to crack with time). I'm happy with the results:






I used it for the B/S, bridge, fingerboard, and headstock overlays. I'll echo what Daniel said- it sure is crumbly. I found it unpleasant to carve for my bridge.