Thread: Rosewood questions?

Originally Posted by Runge

Just a few random thoughts. Gilmerwood ( https://www.gilmerwood.com/ ) sells at least two of the Madagascar Dalbergia species. I believe that some of that was gotten a while ago from Madagascar and some of it came form the liquidation of Theodore Nagel in Germany. The wood you are talking about was, I think, cut along time ago. The question you should be asking yourself is whether D. maratima holds that nice color for long before it fades to brown. It WILL fade....

Bowing to seemingly insurmountable odds stacked against any chance of being able to bring some in, i've decided to begrudgingly give in to the prospect of not using D. maritima on this project unless i can somehow stumble across some hiding locally, In its place, i'm thinking that trying to find some fairly dark boards of D. latifolia might work nicely, or, if something suitably dark pops up...perhaps even a native timber.


As for D. maratima fading, from what i've read on it, all accounts seem to say that its extremely similar to red sandalwood in the way it ages - turning deeper shades of red, then purple and finally almost black. Hence why it enjoyed such a boom in illegal logging to satisfy the flow of cashed up buyers in Asia a few years ago when there was a boom in demand for Zitan furniture and substitute woods were required...