Thread: New Guinea Rosewood

OMG…wish you were in Sydney.
There must be at least one luthier in this forum. Great timber for guitars, if tightly grained.
Should not need GLWTS, IMHO.

Would be worth putting some closeup pics up so members can see the dimensions of the boards they can recover from it, as the fingerjointed boards might be 50mm wide or they might be 150mm or 200mm wide, obviously the latter being more usable.

I've seen many tables with really narrow f/jointed boards, also end f/jointed as well, which makes it hard to get any useful timber out of it unless your making small stuff like door stops, box sides, etc.

The turned legs look to be solid. I can't get under the table to see whether the horizontal supports are solid or jointed.

Truth is you may get some interest at around $25, up to $100 if you’re lucky but I doubt it.
$850 or close to that, Never .

Given the top is 50mm wide strips ( I kinda suspected that), I'd be really surprised if the legs weren't solid and are really well matched boards laminated.

So far as price goes, I think auscab was pretty right in the upper amount. I wouldn't imagine anyone would build anything from it as is because they wouldn't know if the glue used will last, etc. So to my mind the only options are to re-fingerjoint/laminate it, which means ripping and re-machining, or to use it for small projects, but as it's made of narrow strips, once you rip it all up, and cut the fingerjoint flush you're not left with much, so it's diminishing returns and a real lot of work to reclaim usable timber from it.

I'd probably pay $100 stretching it to maybe $150 if I was really wanting some more NGR, and I would rip it all up for using on small stuff. Most I expect will be wanting larger sections to deal with.

I don't know about it being rare though, from my experience NGR timber isn't at all hard to get by the way and isn't overly expensive at all. I've also bought a bunch of boards cheap from Zimbo on this forum.

New Guinea Rosewood is readily available at timber suppliers like Brittons or Mathews. It’s not particularly expensive.

Given the narrow board widths of this table and the effort required to disassemble it, strip the finish off etc I think the asking price is very optimistic. I suggest Auscab’s assessment is on the money.

regards,

Brian

My suggestion would be to find someone who could use the table instead.

In regards to rarity, there are other types of rosewood e.g. Brazilian rosewood, Nicaraguan rosewood aka cocobolo which have endangered status and are restricted for trade under CITES listing. New guinea rosewood is readily available and as per Wikipedia as quoted below while New Guinea rosewood is known as rosewood, it is a different type of wood.

"Other: The timber trade sells many timbers under the name 'rosewood' (usually with an adjective) due to some (outward) similarities. A fair number of these timbers come from other legume genera; one such species that is often mentioned is Bolivian Machaerium scleroxylon sold as 'Bolivian rosewood'. Another that may be found in market from Southeast Asia is Pterocarpus indicus, sold as 'New Guinea rosewood' (and related species)."

OK everyone, points well taken. Thanks for the feedback.

Comments confirm it is not useable as woodworking timber. Thanks for the input.

Originally Posted by Cecile

Comments confirm it is not useable as woodworking timber. Thanks for the input.

Sorry, Cecile, but I agree with your conclusion and the advice that you have received.

I use a lot of salvaged timber but your table would not yield a lot of usable material:

• legs are round, probably need to square them before you can use them ....
• Top is a bit over half a square metre. But broken down, probably less than 0.25 m2 usable ....
• Sad!

But if you had a use for a round rosewood table top, then brilliant!