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I've heard that ziricote has a tendency to crack. Is that true, does it tend to crack more than other woods? Is there a special technique for Ziricote that can reduce that tendency?

Are there woods that are prone to cracking that you avoid and does Ziricote make that list?

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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

Ziricote and Bocote are from the Cordia family and share this characteristic. Splitting along grain lines in perfectly quartered wood. Most folk just put CA on these cracks as they are building or even storing the wood, should they develop.

This is a good example of alternative woods exhibiting characteristics you many not find in the more staple tonewoods. My guess is we will continue to see these woods in use due to their absolute beauty and classy looks. Someone on this forum referred to Ziricote as Crackwood. A humorous but dubious distinction.

Brazilian Rosewood is another that comes to mind.Dickey38925.6019907407

I actually coat the entire surface of sides with CA before bending. and will do the same on backs if I start developing a split. MichaelP38925.6223263889

Great tip there Michael, but isn't it dangerous to have CA on the wood while bending? fumes...vapors?

not really if it is cured and you are in the room with it as you are bending. the flash point of cured CA is higher than 400*F. Now if you are not attending the wood during the bend and cook then you have a fire hazard anyway..While irritating the fumes are not really harmfulMichaelP38925.6413194444

cordia dodecondra(sp.) Ziricote, alias Mexican Crackwood.
Alias title coined by Steve Spodaryk c2003.

As Bruce mentioned, Brazilian Rosewood also has a tendancy to crack and split. The dubious nature of these woods is that they may not give any indication of their desire to crack until after the instrument has been finished and buffed out. It is then that the wood surprises us with it's true purpose in this world...to drive us totally crazy.

Of all the woods I've used, ziricote and brazilian are by far my favorites for tone and beauty.
I have a theory behind all that cracking and beauty...

My theory is this:

It seems that in nature, some of the things that have the most fragility tend to be the things with the most beauty and most desirable properties. So it seems to work with exotic tonewoods.
Although there are many wonderful stable woods for building guitars with, (like Mahogany) we keep emotionally going back to the woods like Brazilian for reasons of tone and beauty.
We all know that the best guitars are built in such a way as to be perfectly balanced between being strong enough to survive the string tension, and blowing apart from the string tension. So it would seem that in nature, those fragile things, the woods that have those wonderful tonal and visual characterists we crave, also exhibit a certain tendency toward self-destruction.

Perhaps things that are right on the edge of obliteration are in some way superior to other things that aren't.

Well, enough of my rant, I need to go take my anti-psychotic meds.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Serge I just wrote and tried to post a long reply and explanation of how I handle the fumes when bending CA'd wood by means of quoted reply but the length of the header for this topic was longer than allowed so it went out into gigabite neverland

Anyway it all boiled down to I wear the same respirator I use when spraying volatiles and it helps greatlyMichaelP38925.666412037

Thanks Michael, i knew the respirator had to be part of your story!

African Crackwood has its moments as well damhikt

Does flooding Ziricote with ca also stop new cracks that might want to be "born" later? Does anyone have really long term experience of Mexican Crackwood's behaviour after its initial splitting phase?

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

I split a back just off the center and CA'd it back to gather before bracing and had no issues afterward.

[QUOTE=MichaelP] I split a back just off the center and CA'd it back to gather before bracing and had no issues afterward.[/QUOTE]

Michael,

I was thinking more like 2-3 years on from building.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

it is 2 1/2 years old and has had no issuesMichaelP38925.676087963

The first time I read that Ziricote was "crackwood," I thought it meant "highly addictive." I guess that makes sense too.

[QUOTE=gibson355] The first time I read that Ziricote was "crackwood," I thought it meant "highly addictive." I guess that makes sense too.[/QUOTE]

Especially if you are sniffing the glue as you apply it.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

I get the feeling that you guys are saying the cracking issues are only during building, but once built, zirocote is not a problem.

Is that true?

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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

If hit in the right place it would crack easier than say mahogany but backs are braced and sides usually have rib bracing or tape so the crack will stop at either the first brace of tape

Michael,
The cracks are from an impact then? They don't just spontaneously appear in random intervals?

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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

not after completing the build. even in the raw state ther has to be a force to cause the split, out side of checking. It just splits easy is the issue.

Well.....not sure I agree with that totally Michael.
Ive seen ziricote crack all on it's own. Maybe you would call it "checking", but to me, a crack is a crack.
It has a lot of internal stresses with all that wild grain, and sometimes it just lets go.
Don't forget, it's moving with temperature and humidity shifts, and moves differently than the braces do, which provides opportunity for cracking also.
This happened with a ziricote guitar of mine that I built. No impacts, no bumps etc. It just split in several places. I kept it in stable humidity conditions, and never any temperature extremes, yet it happened, and not long after it was finished and buffed out too.
Brazilian does the same thing sometimes, and there's no predicting it. I know a guy who had a brazilian Martin, with the nice straight-grained old-growth stuff...yep, he sais it split all to heck over the years, and he babied the thing.

You can head it off at the pass though by flooding it with CA before you use it so that it works into any minute hidden fractures. They're probably the culprits anyway. That's probably the best defense against it.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I've seen the type of cracking Don talks about happen to a number of Ziricote and Maccasar Ebony Guitars. This too were well looked after. To me it is just the nature of the beast, if you decide you want what these tonewoods deliver you have to accept that in the medium to long term they will need some repair.

Me thinks i'll stick with EIR and experiment with Colin's Mahogany for a while!

Ahh....but Serge, as nice as mahogany is.... ziricote delivers sound that is Sweeeeeeeeeeet. Some things are worth the aggrevations.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

You are tempting me Super Don! Keep tawking he he he!

[QUOTE=Don Williams] Well.....not sure I agree with that totally Michael.
Ive seen ziricote crack all on it's own. Maybe you would call it "checking", but to me, a crack is a crack.
It has a lot of internal stresses with all that wild grain, and sometimes it just lets go.
QUOTE] -

Don, are you referring to the spidering similar to BRW? That is pigment figure and not grain. Look close and the two are not related..same in rosewood. I suspect unless ziricote suffers a physical "event" any spontaneous cracking might allready be in the wood same as many other woods. YMMV

I have had ziricote split when resawing and a friend had a Mexcian ziricote classical more or less explode while just hanging up in his shop (but it was probably build without any humidity control). However, I've built a couple with ziricote that seem stable. I would go for quartered and straight grained with ziricote.

The wood I don't trust is wenge.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.