Fretboard wood

[AidanHarris]

Hey all,

One of my mates was cleaning out his shed because he sold his house and is going around Aus with his family. I was invited to go around and collect some treasures with a few other people. I managed to get my hands on some intensly curly marri and a whole stack of hand cut veneers of various timbers. One of the goodies i got was a board of Gimmlet thats about 1.8 long and 100ish wide. This also is curly and apart from a few cracks here and there is clean the whole length.

Is there any problem with using figured woods as fretboard material? I recon that this stuff would look amazing on a guitar.


Aidan

[Kim]

Gday Aiden,

Gimlet should be great once it is on the guitar but I can tell you from my own experience that it is also VERY hard on tools. Resawing 120mm x 1m tuned a brandnew 5m bandsaw blade into an old one in a single pass A tip here is to cut gimlet close to where you need it while it is still green or you will pay the price latter.

Interesting tree gimlet, it has a sort of symbiotic relationship going on with white ants/termites. As you would know gimlet grows mainly in the more arid regions of WA out in the goldfields where it is really hot and there is few nutrients in the soil. You may also know that most gimlet trees are hollow. This is because when young, they grow with soft heart wood which is inviting to white ants. The ants find the tree and eat the heart leaving behind the concrete hard wood that extends out to the bark. This hollowing not only cools the tree, but the debris left behind by the ants makes its way down to the roots of the tree providing a nutrient rich compost right where it is needed. Clever bugger that tree

Cheers

Kim

[TimS]

Hi Aidan,

Gimlet should be quite suitable. Curly Wandoo has also been used for fretboards.

regards

Tim

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