Ovangkol

[Dominic]

Hey, anyone used Ovangkol before? I have 6 sets but have not used it yet. The olive brown colour is really nice. Gilet sells it and gives it a good wrap. Thoughts anyone?
Dom

[woodrat]

Hey Dom, Can you post a pic? I have not used it...have only heard the name. I think that it is African....is that right?

John

[kiwigeo]

Quite a few of the OLF'ers seem to use the stuff...a query ver on that forum might get results. Ive got a few pieces buried somewhere in my stash...might get to use them one day.

[rocket]

""Ovankol""?can i ask,, is it animal vegetable or mineral? and next, wt_ is it?
Rod.

[kiwigeo]

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/forum/ar ... 90305.html

[Dominic]

""Ovankol""?can i ask,, is it animal vegetable or mineral? and next, wt_ is it?
Rod.

Its a rare type of bat shit that luthiers in the know use to size their soundboards, and is apparently the secret behind a Strads sound. Ovang being latin for batshit and Kol meaning sizing. Hence, batshit sizing:D
Hope this helps
Dom

[Bruce McC]

Dom

There is a brief reference to Shedua (Ovangkol) in The Heretics Guide to Alternative Lutherie Woods by
John Calkin.

http://www.guitarnation.com/articles/calkin.htm

He doesn't mention anything about batshit

[Bob Connor]

I've built an OM out of it a few years back.

Smells like dog shit but other than that it builds a nice instrument.

Tonally in between the mahoganies and rosewood families.

Regards

[kiwigeo]

Smells like dog shit but other than that it builds a nice instrument.

An eloquent choice of words Sir!

[ozwood]

Yes Kim,

I was sharing a workshop with a Guy using it and I spent the first half hour after he ran it through the Thicknesser checking my shoes, and His , then it dawned on us , it was the Timber, and to this day stick your snoz in the sound hole and yep the distinct smell of canine excrament ( dog shit ).

Cheers,

[kiwigeo]

Reminds me of the time I borrowed a girl friends car to pick up a load of firewood I'd cut and temporarily stored in a farmer friends barn. Driving home I noticed the noticeable pungent odour of dog shit wafting through the car. On arriving home we discovered the pile of wood had been used as a "barkers nest" by my farmer friends dogs.

[Kim]

A bloke named Robin once told me that sometimes bat shit can be counter sunk on one end....wonder if that's the special stuff they use for sizing guitar tops...and how would those Latin blokes say "countersunk"?? Probably something like "unumdimplendus" I reckon. So that would make it "Ovang-kol-unumdimplendus" or "bat-shit-with-a-dimple-in-one-end"..that seems awful long that translation, I may start typing in latin all the time and save me fingers...anyway I will google it see what I come up with.....






.................Oh......I see...so 'that's' what he meant..well that kills that theory Dom

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sw4-hp8vr-Q/T ... -robin.jpg

When he kept calling me duckie I thought he had mixed me up with someone else...I feel a bit silly now cause I should have worked out what was going on by those green felt shoes, and besides, Robin is a girls name.

Cheers

Kim

[kiwigeo]

When he kept calling me duckie I thought he had mixed me up with someone else...I feel a bit silly now cause I should have worked out what was going on by those green felt shoes.....

The green felt shoes went with his green Commodore??

[Dominic]

Kim, that's "Bat(man)Shit" when what you want is plain old 'batshit'. The difference is subtle but important. A bit like silver ash, the marketing people tend to blur things. But you really don't want to be smearing your soundboard with "Bat(man)Shit" even if you could get it. And from the pic Robin obviously does not seem to understand conventional collection methods. For a start, he really ought to be behind the man bat not in front.


Now, a radical change in subject but talking about the efficiency of language, I have a friend from Montenegro and he told how after the war and the seperation of the old states, Croatia wanted to purify their language. There used to be a simple one word, word for belt but that word was not Croatian enough so now when you want to say 'where is my belt', the official language translates to "where is the device that goes around my waist and keeps my trousers up". Of course once we heard that and had picked ourselves up off the floor we spent days applying it to every situation we could think of. Try ordering a coffee in busy New York when you can't say coffee.

Cheers Dom

[Dominic]

Yes Kim,

I was sharing a workshop with a Guy using it and I spent the first half hour after he ran it through the Thicknesser checking my shoes, and His , then it dawned on us , it was the Timber, and to this day stick your snoz in the sound hole and yep the distinct smell of canine excrement ( dog shit ).

Cheers,

I've got 3 or 4 sets of Queensland Walnut and that smells distinctly shitty even after sitting on my shelf undisturbed for over 3 years. Nice looking sets but I'm afraid the assault on my olfactory senses may be too great. I never knew Ovangkol was the same, can't smell my sets so they must need a fresh surface before they come into their own and complete with Qld Walnut. Taking the silent but deadly approach.

Cheers
Dom

[Dominic]

Hey Dom, Can you post a pic? I have not used it...have only heard the name. I think that it is African....is that right?

John

Sorry John, what I want always seems to be on the bottom of the pile and its too much of a hassle to unpack everything on top of them to get to them. There should be plenty of pics on the net, I think Allied has pics of a finished Ovangkol guitar that looks olive browngold. Unconventional but nice.
And again, the thing to do is test it and find and record the material properties then work out which style guitar would work best with it and optimal thickness etc. I am happy to share this stuff, a little database somewhere we can all add to over time would be very cool.
Cheers
Dom