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Brazillian Rosewood Value


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i just took on a project to make a stock and forestock for a late 1800's breach load single shot .410 shotgun. the owner of the gun and i e-mailed several times before he drove down here bringing me the gun and he kept saying that he had a nice piece of bavarian wood to use.

well, the wood turns out to be a piece of 2 1/4" x 3 1/2" x 4' brazillian rosewood that was his dad's. he's had it for over 20 years waiting for an appropriate project to come along and has no idea how long his dad had it.

it'll make a great stock..nice figure on it and a lot denser and heavier than i would have thought.

so i'm curious..what's a chunk of wood like this worth to a good professional guitar maker?

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I've been pricing out a lot of BRW lately, looking for a special piece. Flatsawn lumber will run about $100 per board foot; quartersawn stuff is either little pieces or already sawn into back & side sets ($600-800 for good ones). I've been looking, calling & asking around for a couple of months, and I have yet to find guitar-sized quartersawn lumber that hasn't already been resawn.

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thanks for the input guys..one of the reasons that i accepted the job was that i get the leftovers. won't be enough for fretboards but more than enough for years of custom truss rod covers, control plates and such.

later

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Yes, "and such" those always come in handy :D

Wouldn't a rosewood stock be a bit hard on the shoulder with the kickback?

I know very little about this, but I thought that the reason walnut was used was to absorb some of the shock?

A friend of mine bought a piece of "walnut" from a salvage place for like ten bucks a while back. He had picked it up because he thought I might want it, and was wondering why it was so heavy. It was brazilian rosewood. I told him what it was and that I'd happily give him considerably more for it. He said it wasn't anything to him, and I could give him $15. I gave him twenty. :D I don't know how it ended up there, probably stashed in the rafters of some deceased woodworker's garage that got torn down. It's now stashed in mine. B)

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Wouldn't a rosewood stock be a bit hard on the shoulder with the kickback?

I know very little about this, but I thought that the reason walnut was used was to absorb some of the shock?

That's possible, but I wouldn't think it'd make much difference... as someone who's spent a lot of time shooting old shotguns, a walnut stock 20ga with a thin hard resin butt plate really starts to kill my shoulder after a while, but a walnut stock 12ga with a hard rubber (pretty stiff but still a lot more give than the resin one) butt plate only about 1/2"-3/4" thick I can shoot all day with no trouble. These are both old over-unders about the same weight and there's no recoil compensation or anything with either.

With proper shooting form, how hard the wood is shouldn't make much difference, your shoulder is supposed to get pushed by and move with the gun, not get hit by it, and a softer butt plate just conforms better to your shoulder and spreads out the push.

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I was about to say.. I don't care what the wood is the kick hurts! I'm sure form is everything and I don't have that much, but i spend a day shooting my dads double barrell 12 gauge once and my shoulder was just hamburger meat by the time I was done..

BRW ought to make a beautiful stock.. but is 3" wide enough? Aren't guns usually more like 4" or so at the widest part of the butt?

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most gun stocks are made of dense wood..walnut has been a favorite of many manufacturers for years. the wood has to take a lot of abuse over the life of the gun. a softer wood would compress over the years. and a .410 doesn't kick much anyway. you could shoot it with one hand without much problem.

and you're right about the size of the stock. i'm going to have to glue up one small part of it to make it a little wider but that's no problem either. it'll be a while before i get it finished but i'll post pics if you like. not exactly the right project for a guitar forum but wood is wood.

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