Red Gum Eucalypt

[woodrat]

Hello Everyone, This is my first post on this great forum. I have been a looker for a while and have learned a great deal. There is a subject on Red Box but I am not sure what that is exactly but I have some wide figured 1/4 sawn boards that I bought at an auction in about 2004 as Red Gum. I bought them when a timber merchant closed down. Anyway I would like to know if it is usable as a tonewood. They are excellent boards but very heavy in their 12x2 inch form. Has anybody used red gum as a guitar wood? They are deep red and have a beeswing type of figure that appears in eucalypt sometimes. A penny for your thoughts.

Cheers John

[Allen]

Welcome to the forum Woodrat. I moved this post to the main forum, as it's not likely to get much attention where it was.

The only Red Gum that I've used has been for a work bench. It was bloody hard and heavy to work with, and prone to be a bit splintery. Not cut it up in to guitar type sizes though.

[xray]

hey pal, i dont usually post too much due to my lack of experience in a lot of building type messages, but my expertise lies within cutting up wood and most native species i have either worked with or seen other wood workers use. The thing with the beautiuful figure in this timber would make a great looking guitar if you can find a very very sharp blade to do the resawing. Gum when wet is nice to cut although hard on blades, however when it is dry if the timber has any runout or uneven grain, the resaw will follow the true path of the grain potentially making alot of wasted timber. if you were to find a resaw feed the timber painfully slow and i would suggest contracting a motorised feeding resaw. good luck and let me know how it goes. andy

[woodrat]

hey pal, i dont usually post too much due to my lack of experience in a lot of building type messages, but my expertise lies within cutting up wood and most native species i have either worked with or seen other wood workers use. The thing with the beautiuful figure in this timber would make a great looking guitar if you can find a very very sharp blade to do the resawing. Gum when wet is nice to cut although hard on blades, however when it is dry if the timber has any runout or uneven grain, the resaw will follow the true path of the grain potentially making alot of wasted timber. if you were to find a resaw feed the timber painfully slow and i would suggest contracting a motorised feeding resaw. good luck and let me know how it goes. andy

Thanks for the advice Andy.