Rosewood

[Yonkle]

I am building F5 #6 was thinking on a Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard and peghead, Any pros or cons I should concider? Also any PICs of rosewood peghead inlayed?
How is rosewood for inlaying the head?
Thanks JD (Yonkle)

[Dave Cohen]

I've done several in rosewood, both Indian and Brazilian. The predictable differences are that it is much harder to hide inlay gaps with filler, and the larger pores in the rosewoods require filling. The filling is a doable nuisance, but the inlay gaps are more of a problem. Because the refractive index of the a glue/rosewood dust mixture is different than that of the rosewood itself, it is virtually impossible to make the gap fills invisible. So make your inlay cavities as clean and tight as possible.

Otoh, Brazilian rosewood headplates have a lot of "character" that is a nice change from ebony every so often. Even Indian can have nice character, if you happen to find the "right" pieces of it.

[Dave Cohen]

Here are some parts for an F currently close to completion. These parts are all "cur;y" Brazilian, though the amount of figure varies. As curly figure in Brazilian rosewood is mostly compression figure, you takes what you can get.

[Antlurz]

Dave...

What's your favored adhesive for covering a tailpiece like that? I'm going to be doing one in ebony..

Ron

[Dave Cohen]

The tailpiece cover is not glued onto the tailpiece. Rather, it is a substitute for the metal cover. I make it with a sliding dovetail so that it slides over the edges of the conventional stamped tailpiece in the same way that the metal cover does. It has a rosewood strip glued to the underside at the tail end, cross-grain, for reinforcement. It is low mass and forearm-friendly.

I have been gluing wood covers to Rigel-style downhook tailpieces with epoxy. Most of them stay put, but a few of them do come loose, particularly when exposed to extremes of temperature and/or humidity. The metal moves with changing temperature while the wood doesn't move much, whereas the wood moves with changing humidity while the metal does not. I doubt that any adhesive would be perfect for that job. Maybe something like Dupont High-strength 90 spray adhesive, which is used to stick kick plates to exterior doors. I haven't tried that, so I don't know if it would work or not. But its' properties make it a candidate.

[Antlurz]

I had considered doing it like you describe, but the design I want to use would leave me with very thin sides for the dovetail, and I'm not to comfortable about how sturdy it would be.

Ron

[Antlurz]

The way to solve the gluing problem might be to drill a series of holes through the original cover, and then chamfer them bigger on the bottom, so that gluing them would get a better grip if the glue was to go through the holes and get a bit wider on the back of the hole.

Ron

[Mark Franzke]

I love the character of the rosewood, but I like the contrast of ebony, so I make the overlay out of rosewood and stain it with thinned black until it is dark enough to contrast but still allow the grain to show.

[Dave Cohen]

Why not just use Macassar ebony? I doubt if the additional cost for Macassar adds up to the time you spend dyeing, sealing, and filling the rosewood.