"African" Rosewood - anyone used it?

Tannin

more said:

Mahogany is a good example of a  generic name . There is no such thing as a  Mahogany tree . That is not true of all wood. Ebony ,maple ,cedar and rosewood , to   name  just a few, are products of a tree that  have the name of the wood  . Indian rosewood is the most common wood in guitar making , it grow fast and is sometimes known  locally as Shisham, it is also know as   rosewood .  The  wood you  have is found in all of the southern end of Africa. It is locally known as Copalwood , machibi ,and bubinga . When worked, It  has  the  smell of menthol . It only becomes rosewood when sold outside of Africa and is not rosewood.   

It gets worse! "Mahogany" originally meant Swietenia mahagoni (the species nowadays knows as West Indian Mahogany) but  these days it is properly used to indicate any of three very closely related species: the West Indian one just mentioned, Honduran Mahogany, and Pacific Coast Mahogany. Most mahogany sold today is Honduran Mahogany plantation-grown in Asia and the Pacific. Khaya, often called "African mahogany", was once regarded as another mahogany species but is now considered to belong to a different genus. It is nevertheless closely related. 

Ebony is fairly unproblematic. There are several species all in the same genus (but other trees also in that genus are clearly not ebonies - persimmon is one).

Maple is a horrorshow! Originally "maple" indicated any of more than 100 species in the genus Acer. Most species come from Asia (counting Europe as part of Asia) but some elsewhere, notably North America. But Europeans in past centuries travelling to foreign places and meeting unfamiliar trees named many of them "(something) maple". Queensland Maple is a Flindersia  - nothing at all to do with the genus Acer and distantly related to oranges and lemons. Silky Maple (an even better tonewood, though very hard to get) is a different Flindersia. And so on.

Cedar is worse! A true cedar is any of the four species in the genus Cedrus. The only one of these four that I know is used as a tonewood - and that seldom because it is hard to get - is Cedar of Lebanon. This genus is part of the family Pinaceae, which also contains 120-odd pines, more than 30 spruces, a dozen larches, Douglas Fir/Oregon Pine (which is not a pine or a fir), 50-odd firs, and various others.  Of the three best known "cedar" tonewoods, none is actually a cedar, nor even in the same family! Western Red Cedar is a cypress, as is Port Orford Cedar, while Spanish Cedar is closely related to (of all things) the mahoganies! 

Rosewood is relatively easy: it is any of the more than 200 species in the genus Dalbergia.

As for beech and myrtle, let's not go there.

PeteC

Looking at it closely and reading up I think it might be this wood…..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guibourtia_coleosperma

the timber merchant is looking into it for me - they bought the stock from another yard that closed nearly 9 years ago - so it’s been around a while.   

Their wood expert is back from holiday tomorrow so they expect to give me an answer some time in next 24 hours - it will be interesting to see what it actually is.  

BillDL

Hah!  I remember those trees.  Several quite old ones grew in the grounds of my high school in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).  I recognise the leaves and the bark from Internet photos.  There were quite a lot of them growing in the wild bushland that I roamed freely as a kid.  Me and my friends blew one of them up with a massive improvised bomb in a 44 gallon drum with a spark plug wired to a tractor magneto using very long wires.  A rival gang had built their tree house in it, so it had to be destroyed.  I won't mention the specific components of the bomb in case it gives people ideas, but it was a large enough explosion to blow out half of the trunk of the tree.  I vividly remember the deep red heartwood surrounded by much paler brown sapwood.  When we tried to chop the remaining trunk with an axe to fell the tree it was such hard wood that I gave up.

PeteC

Ha! @BillDL ;;

well the plot thins .... Duffields can't exactly identify it. It turns out to be old stock that was bought in at the now defunct John Boddy Timber store in N Yorks many years ago, and simply got transferred to Duffields when they bought part of Boddys stock when they closed down.  It must have been there for at least 10 years if not more. 

They have definitely ruled out it being Bubinga, Iroko, Afromosia, and any sort of Teak.  They are convinced its a proper Rosewood but can't say definitively what it is.   Anyhow, I will just have to make something with it and see how it pans out.   I might just cut a piece of one end and make a couple of fretboards first to see how it looks. 
Its got a nice tap tone - so it might end up being a few hundred sets of claves ! 

GSPBASSES

 I think your wood is Pau Rose shown in the link below.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/274663440117?chn=ps&var=574890239138&_trkparms=ispr=1&amdata=enc:1f7KJLji1Sy6IysZWASba3A98&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-134428-41853-0&mkcid=2&itemid=574890239138_274663440117&targetid=1596500856709&device=c&mktype=&googleloc=1006625&poi=&campaignid=15278604175&mkgroupid=135429446288&rlsatarget=pla-1596500856709&abcId=9300698&merchantid=116266530&gclid=Cj0KCQjwl7qSBhD-ARIsACvV1X2vKD1tJ22TbCCLABMQSSEo_6J6tmzxtLtvPNsBTlEbuWdOKDk4gfwaAr6lEALw_wcB

PeteC

Thanks Graham 

it certainly looks very similar and reading about Pau Rosa it seems to fit the characteristics very well.   Seems like a good wood to use.  Thanks for the link.  

BillDL

Even with Pau Rosa there can be misleading information.  Pau is Portuguese for stick or wood, and Rosa just refers to the colour, so there are bound to be a number of different rosy red woods.

In the description in the linked ebay page the species is given as Bobgunnia madagascariensis, commonly known as the Snake Bean tree which I also recall from my youth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobgunnia_madagascariensis

https://www.zimbabweflora.co.zw/speciesdata/species.php?species_id=127240

https://www.reidtimber.co.uk/pau-rosa-fretboard-blanks

https://www.wood-database.com/pau-rosa/

Take a look at the shape of the leaves and compare them with the Laurel-like tree Aniba rosodora that is also known in Brazil as Pau-Rosa that is used to extract perfumery base oil, but has quite hard wood:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniba_rosaeodora

https://www.wood-database.com/brazilian-pau-rosa/