I am the General Manager for Commercial Forest Products out of Fontana, California, USA. We distribute and manufacture complex wood products including musical instrument tone woods such as Swamp Ash, Mahogany, Pau Ferro, Paulownia, Black Limba, White Limba (Korina) among many other species. Additionally, we offer custom millwork and custom hardwood flooring manufacturing. If your current suppliers are letting you down, hit us up. Thanks - Steve
I feel your pain I live in Hawaii I'm a finish carpenter I do so much repair on koa and some of the boards im using are well over a $1000 im getting at cheeper prices then you but the waste unbelievable as for stringed instruments koa far from the best tone wood
Thank you for the video. I recently acquired a phenomenal amount of mahogany wood. I m3an a shot ton. Very wide and thick. Some as much as 2.5 inches thick and up to 12' long and 12" wide. It had been sitting in a warehouse for the past 40+ years. It's all rough sawn. I have a couple planers,jointer etc. I need to plane some of it I guess to determine what type but I am leaning towards genuine mahogany based on what I have learned. Anyway thanks for the info
My grandfather got caught up in the paulawnia craze in the 90s. It's a cool hobby wood but nothing to waste time harvesting. It takes a lot of care for it to grow as advertised. It's basically a hardwood weed.
I just finished a D-18 out of African Mahogany... the grain is almost tigered , and it pops out at you .. Its light .. but best of all... Its the best sounding guitar I own . In fact It rivals a top deluxe Martin with expensive wood costing thousands of dollars.. In both looks and sound . It's a great sounding wood ... with a lot of tone ....
I ordered a couple blanks from you guys and got it last week. The blanks look amazing and had a couple others on the go. I expect a 3lb blank. Love that I found a replacement to Swampash.😁
The weight and density should make it extremely easy when it comes to musical instruments, but you broke it down perfectly with your expertise. *When it comes to guitars, if a guitar is sold as mahogany but you pick it up and it's lightweight, you know you have an African variety especially based on where that guitar was made.* Every mahogany guitar I own is dense and extremely heavy compared to other very popular woods, *but sometimes you get a mahogany guitar that is as light as basswood!* Typically, a guitarist used to mahogany that picks up a lightweight mahogany guitar will not be happy about it.
@@CommercialForest yes I was exaggerating but there's still a sense of ridiculous lightness to some. I just got a 24-fret mahogany neck and body Alexi Laiho style V. It's so light it sort of feels like the wood fibers are aerated like basswood. The more I look at what graining is visible, pick it up and hold it in various positions the more I can feel it's certainly a Mahogany but an exotic breed like Khaya and the pieces in my guitar are somewhat light and it has a borderline hollow feel to both the body and neck. *I have to strip the paint and clearcoat off the neck today though so once I get to the bare wood, I'll be 100% certain about many things, not just the wood breed used!* Oddly, I have had some pear wood instruments, and this thing has greatly felt like one of those super strong fruit woods. The pearwood necks tend to feel hollow but there's almost no poring as I'm sure you know, and fruit trees produce some of the toughest lumber.
@@JonDeth We brought in some figured pearwood slabs a few years ago, One was 20" wide x 18 feet long. It was insanely dense. Needed a forklift to flip it over.
@@CommercialForest it seems like it would be an interesting experience and the instrument 1 of a kind top of the line, but I am in the Midwest and ordering specialty lumber is beyond my budget distance lol. Fortunately, I can get furniture grade poplar for under $20 to build most any size and shape body, so it'll have to do for now. Eventually, I will have my CNC mill doing most of the work, so the day may come I can get something exotic going on.
If I had to guess,, I'd point to a general lack of experience (at least with Paulownia) among the teams involved. Even under the best conditions, a harvest can go sideways.
@@CommercialForest that’s what I see around me! They try to grow them in Holland, but it’s to wet and to cold. Even 3 years old trees die! And not enough temperature to grow in the first year! You need a firm and tall trunk. For fineer wood.
I selected ultra-light mahogany for my LP build I'm ordering. I'm doing all the hardware myself. They have Honduran, but I am concerned about weight. I already own 2 LP's that are boat anchors. One is a Japanese built African m, and the other a 78' Gibson that lives up to 70's Gibson weight issues. Regardless I played for years onstage with it and became used to it. I want this new 59' spec build to reflect the weight of the original Gibsons, which were light. And just wanted to know what a lighter LP felt like. Honestly I can't tell the difference in sound of my Honduran vs. African mahogany guitars, other than their dramatically different pickups. Different fretboards too, one ebony and the other rosewood.
Wood is a natural product so you have to expect variations with it. That's the beauty of wood, it's all different. You want something all the same go buy plastic. They'll sell you that too.
@@CommercialForest you're lucky we can even still get wood today. The old timers logged just about everything worth anything. They had to live too. They also wanted the best they could get for themselves. Being there first they took it. We're left today with their scraps.
The two pieces you shown in the video brought two things to mind. First, that koa most often grows with lots of crooked branches and bends, which might account partly for those angles ... especially if someone is trying to salvage every inch. Straight trunks are out there and not all too uncommon but winding branches are more the norm for growth. Second, it's not too often that healthy live koa are logged and so it is often old koa which have fallen down which get salvaged. Hence, they may often have some rot associated with them.
You left out a lot about the qualities of paulownia wood. You mentioned lightness and softness, but there are others. The wood resists moisture, can make veneers with it, resists insects including termites and is flame resistent. The leaves capture carbon from the atmosphere more than any other tree in the world reducing a farmers carbon footprint. The leaves also absorb great amounts of nitrogen and when the leaves fall and mix with the soil a huge amount of natural nitrogen fertilizer is added to it. Makes a world famous compost for gardeners.
I intend to grow paulownia on several acres commercially, as soon as I can get a water well drilled. The tree is ready to harvest in 5 years and grows back from the stump and can be harvested 7 times in its life.@@CommercialForest
That is a really good video. I was thinking of growing about a hectare of paulownia and then either slabbing or quartering the logs. Would a guitar maker prefer (and pay more for) bookmatched quartered paulownia ?
@@jeff1872t yes, we stock both. DM me on Instagram instagram.com/commercialforest and let me know the how much lumber you need & what to zip code. We’ll send a listing with delovered pricing. Thanks! Steve
That’s a good question. I am not sure. There are areas within North America where it does not grow well. In general, Paulownia grows best in warm areas with moderate humidity.
Okay, if ya don't like it, you don't like your suppliers, the quality they produce, and all that... go out and grow some of your own. In the '70s I worked in a sawmill cutting koa - this was in Hilo - and we threw away anything shorter than 2 feet. I cockroached some to make surfboard fins, but knowing little about seasoning and drying, I soon found that the fins I made would warp overnight. I had to fiberglass them the same day I cut them. Well that worked for a while.
There is a public buildings maintenance department up the street from me. I'll try asking them, but they might or might not agree. Hope there aren't any regulations the city put on it. Oh, and thanks for the video.
2:04 I have my parents old Koa furniture with the Anthurium carving. This furniture is older than my oldest sibling. My parents bought it in 1946. Koa wood furniture last a long time. I wouldn’t trade it for any of the modern junk they sell in furniture stores today.