The end of Rosewood

[euroa guitars]

A bit of discussion over on TDPRI about Pau Ferro becoming the fretboard of choice to replace Rosewood, apparently Fender have been dabbling with it for a while

http://www.wood-database.com/pau-ferro/

I spoke with the guys from Guitar Fetish back in January about their Rosewood fretboard necks, they told me that they switched to Bolivian Rosewood last year, which is one of the common names for Pau Ferro...although if you check their website it says the fretboards are Indian Rosewood (on the CITES list) and the headstock has a Bolivian Rosewood cap???

[cork sniffer]

Looks like the restrictions are starting to hit - StewMac

Attachment 18673

I suspect some US companies are too lazy to arrange paperwork.
I had a new rosewood Rickenbacker come in from Chicago Music Exchange 2 weeks ago. They told me it would take 2 days longer than normal while the paperwork was prepared. Before I found them I had two refusals from other firms to send beyond US.

[Simon Barden]

I'd also imagine it is too heavy on paperwork for a lot of the US box-shifters. There's not a huge margin on guitars any more, so any extra time needed to provide the right paperwork eats into those slim margins. I could understand if they now added on a surcharge for handling the CITES paperwork - which to me would be fair - but to simply not be bothered to do it does show a lack of forethought.

[euroa guitars]

Update on how the Blackwoodtek fake Rosewood is going
It is now radiused inlayed and fretted

I started out quite liking working with this material, however the following happened:

As the fretboard was being radiused using a radius sanding block, I found that it was taking more of the lighter timber away than the darker timber so it appears that there are harder and softer areas in the timber. I thought this a bit strange considering the timber is treated.

Inlaying did not present any problems, the wood dust being mixed with a little superglue as a filler worked well.

Fretting presented some problems, I found that some of the frets were not seating properly and I decided to remove some and change my fret wire this caused a fair amount of flaking around the fret slots.
Fretting was eventually finished satisfactorily with the frets being glued in. (Which I would normally do anyway by applying a small amount of titebond in the fret slot)

Next step will be shaping the neck and then oiling the fretboard, so will then see how the Fake Rosewood feels.

So a little problematic but not too bad, don't know if I would like to ever do a refret though I suspect you may get a lot of grain tear and flaking.

[Simon Barden]

What was the original and replacement fretwire? Much difference in tang or barb size?

[euroa guitars]

What was the original and replacement fretwire? Much difference in tang or barb size?

Same size fretwire but used a crimper to adjust the tang width. The fretwire was a narrow medium wire I had left over from CBG builds years ago. I used med jumbo wire in the zero nut position and this worked a lot better. In hindsight med jumbo would have been the better choice. Although I must say I never had a problem with the narrow med wire when I was fretting CBGs with a hardwood fretboard. Adam said the Blackwoodtek fretboards were made from treated Radiata Pine
so that may have been the issue (despite being treated)

[vh2580]

So continued on with this neck, when trimming the sides of board down with a file found some lateral cracking in the board (minor movement) and added some glue and clamped to see if it would improve and didn't come up too bad. radiused the board, seemed to take awhile to sand and a lot more frequent paper changes as clogged up a bit (sticky dust) but came up all right.

[vh2580]

And then it all went wrong, but not entirely a material issue.
Fret slots were not deep enough so had to run saw through again (normally not an issue). cleaned slots as best I could and then started to saw again. Not sure if related to the sticky dust or not but saw would not easily move through the material so needed a bit more light force to get in and clear material. during this process now have more chips than Smiths on the board. It is a brittler material than timber so was a little less forgiving of my saw action. I suppose is down to difference in material verses process, as could have likely avoided if the slots were deeper to begin with. You can also see a bit of the "colour bleed" that Euroa was talking about up near the nut end of the board.
I will probably scrap this neck as not to keen to continue and fit frets.
So from my initial experience, I wouldn't say that it is an entirely bad material or I would never use it again, but would do things differently in the way I worked with it.

[nDR01d]

I have noticed that Warmoth have got their act together. They can export some Rosewoods, but not all, now that they have a licence. All you need to do now is afford their products

[wazkelly]

And then it all went wrong, but not entirely a material issue.
Fret slots were not deep enough so had to run saw through again (normally not an issue). cleaned slots as best I could and then started to saw again. Not sure if related to the sticky dust or not but saw would not easily move through the material so needed a bit more light force to get in and clear material. during this process now have more chips than Smiths on the board. It is a brittler material than timber so was a little less forgiving of my saw action. I suppose is down to difference in material verses process, as could have likely avoided if the slots were deeper to begin with. You can also see a bit of the "colour bleed" that Euroa was talking about up near the nut end of the board.
I will probably scrap this neck as not to keen to continue and fit frets.
So from my initial experience, I wouldn't say that it is an entirely bad material or I would never use it again, but would do things differently in the way I worked with it.

Those chips near the fret slots make it look like rosewood as that is what things looked like when I removed frets on a Rosewood board however the colour variation once sanded is weird. Maybe we may have to add dark stains to maple if wanting a dark fret board in the future?