WestWoodWorking.com
D Hohmann Handyman & Westwood Woodworking
Projects
Boxes
I started making boxes as gifts for my family back in 2005 after I had moved from Hoboken to Westwood NJ.
Working with Cocobolo is very challenging. It is hard to glue and finish but when done the effort is well worth it!
Cocobolo is a tropical hardwood of the tree Dalbergia retusa from Central America. The heartwood is typically orange or reddish-brown in color, often with a figuring of darker irregular traces weaving through the wood. The sapwood is a creamy yellow, with a sharp boundary with the heartwood that produces the striking contrast in these boxes. Cocobolo is oily in look and feel. This oil lends a strong, unmistakable spicy odor even to well seasoned wood. Standing up well to repeated handling and exposure to water, a common use is in gun grips and knife handles. It is very hard, fine textured and dense, but is easily machined. Due to its density and hardness, even a large block of the cut wood will produce a clear musical tone if struck. Cocobolo can be polished to a lustrous, glassy finish and these boxes are very smooth to the touch. The high natural oil content of the wood makes it difficult to achieve a strong glue joint, and can inhibit the curing of some varnishes, particularly oil based finishes. My boxes are sealed with shellac before a spar varnish is added for UV protection.
Besides its use in gun grips and knife handles, cocobolo is favored for fine inlay work for custom high-end cue sticks, police batons, pens, brush backs, and musical instruments, especially guitars, drums and basses. Alembic Inc considers cocobolo to be its house wood, and many famous players such as Stanley Clarke use such basses. Jerry Garcia's Tiger (guitar) has a cocobolo top and back. Most recently acoustic guitars are being made from cocobolo due to limitations in certain tonewoods (particularly rosewoods, mahogany and ebony). Companies like Ibanez and Dean Guitars have launched an exotic wood series featuring cocobolo and other exotic woods (those there are laminates, with a cocobolo veneer). PRS and Taylor guitars have also used solid cocobolo for back and side sets on their higher end models. Cocobolo is growing in popularity among smaller builders, due to its great acoustic properties much like Brazilian rosewood, and for the fact that it is much more aesthetically pleasing than other more readily available rosewood species such as East Indian rosewood. Some woodwind instruments, such as clarinets, oboes, and bagpipes, have been successfully made using cocobolo instead of the normal grenadilla (African blackwood). More uses include decorative and figured veneers, bowls, jewelry boxes, luxury pens, duck and goose calls, and other expensive specialty items. Some cocobolo has a specific gravity of over 1.0, and will sink in water.
In 2012, C. F. Martin & Co. released a limited-edition guitar in conjunction with performing artist John Mayer. The 00-45SC (SC standing for "Stagecoach") is limited to 25 pieces and features cocobolo back and sides.
Chessboards
I added chessboards to my project list last year. These boards have 2 1/4" squares but I also make 2" and custom sizes. The series shown all of Padauk edges but I have also used Zebrawood with and without macassar ebony inlay.
For making the white squares I had a stump of a maple tree that had some beautiful spalting. Spalting in maple are thin black lines caused by fungus. The stump that I had was from a relatively healthy tree and there was a minimum of white rot that can degrade the hardness of the wood.
The dark squares are made from Cocobolo, Bubinga or Wenge. Cocobolo makes a varied patterned dark square, Bubinga is a more uniform brown square and Wenge makes a very black square that can have a variety of grain patterns.
Cocobolo originates in Central America while Bubinga and Wenge come from Africa. Cocobolo has recently been added to the CITES Appendix II (vulnerable), and is on the IUCN Red List. It is listed as vulnerable due to a population reduction of over 20% in the past three generations caused by a decline in its natural range and exploitation. Wenge is listed as endangered in the IUCN Red List: Category EN A1cd, principally due to destruction of its habitat of over 50% in the past three generations and over-exploitation for timber.
I take special care not to waste any wood in constructing chessboards or in other products. It is my belief that respect and desire for these woods will insure their survival as an important revenue resource for the countries that export them and in the end, this will help stop habitat destruction.
The boarder wood on these boards is Padauk (or also spelled Padouk). It is red in color when cut but will change to a golden brown if exposed to excess UV light. I finish the boards with marine spar varnish to help maintain the color and protect the wood from UV light but the wood will still change over time if exposed to direct sunlight.