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I was cleaning up my stash racks and uncovered this cocobolo board I had almost forgotten about. I've had it for almost 20 years. It's more or less flat sawn and 42" x 10" x 1". Would you be confident to use it for guitar back and sides or would you make smaller instruments like ukes using the closer to rift sawn areas near the sides? I believe I was thinking archtop back years ago but that would certainly waste a lot of wood which I don't want to do.

That'd make a mighty expensive coffee table top for someone's living room.

I seem to recall paying about $50 for it at the time so not too expensive.

Value-wise, I would definitely get 2 guitar sets if you can avoid any cracked areas and such.

Pat

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Pat

You might be able to get backs out of the half of the board on the right side of the screen by including the sap wood and joining it on the sap wood edge. That would put the flatter sawn areas to the outer edges of the back. If you build smaller guitars (classical or OO or parlor) you could cut that end of the board to 7 -7 1/4 inches at one end and 6 - 6 1/2 at the other and possibly get fingerboards out of the off fall.
You might consider hanging on to it as is. If coco goes the way of BRW you may find people willing to pay big prices for less than perfect wood. Flat sawn wood doesn't always crack or warp, just does it more often.

Thanks Clay. There's no cracks and it's very flat and straight still. I may sit on it for a while. It's definitely tough to get any good coco here and the USA suppliers can't ship here.

I'm thinking the same way. Even though it has stabilized for the last 20 years, I'll see if I can get 5 or 6 slices out of it and put it away for a little bit more and muse.

Yeah, if you've got a rig and the resaw skills you could do six slices. Especially since final thicknesses will be a lower than normal because of the high density.

I haven't used Coco yet but my finals on mac ebony, Malaysian bw & SE Asian rw OM's we're <80 for the back and <70 for the sides.

Pat

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Pat

Thanks Pat. I have a 17" saw and have done a fair bit of resawing so not a problem there. I've resawn African Blackwood before so will assume that cocobolo wouldn't be gummier than that stuff. I haven't run into a wood worse than blackwood for plugging up my drum sander and quickly learned to use nothing above 80 grit and very light passes. Full on PPE as well.

My thoughts for 2 guitars of Dread size:

- With this board I'd typically cut 10" off one end which could be used for peghead veneers and/or bridges or other uses.
- Then take 2 slices at about .11" thick off the 10"x 32" board. Then cut these in half longways to yield 4 each ~4.9"x 32" long sides.
- Then cut ~1.8" off longways from the remaining 10"x 32" board giving a 1.8" wide x 32" piece for making bindings.
- Take the 8.1"x32" board and cut 11" off of it for 11"x8.1" as extra misc. material for peghead veneer and/or bridges or other uses
- Then saw the remaining 8.1"x 21" piece into 4 slices for back material slices.

This gives you 2 sets for guitars, bindings, peghead veneers, bridges, etc.

The obvious problem with this piece is being flatsawn for the sides, which I have never done - yet.

Thanks for the tips Ed. I've been researching on the forum for experiences with flatsawn cocobolo sides and it seems most people don't have issues with bending. I'm also thinking the sides may be partly rift sawn based on the curvature of the grain if that makes sense.