... here’s to a forum/ community that to me seems to be about as altruistic as you practically never see. Love that about you guys!! Micro version of world peace here. I mean, there will be heated exchanges. But I see it like a family. What family doesn’t bicker from time to time. Great info and aloha is abundant and that’s what really shines through.
From all the craziness of 2016, UU stayed pretty cool. Congrats to the founders and contributors. See you in the new year… 2017…AHHHHH!!!
Excellent all around Andrew. And in the spirit of family, a special shout out to Mr. Pete Howlett.
Simply with effort we can include our friends/ supporters in other countries (like me, if you are outside the US). If you change woods, cool....
Pete et al, just thought I'd share a bit of my experience. Use it as it suits your situation.
Because we actually produced instruments in Central America we needed to get export permits to get them into the U.S. Though a permit was "supposedly" only $50 per species, if you had a few restricted species in an instrument and your shipment of say six intruments had some variation among the instruments you could easily end up with $600 or more in legitimate permit fees for your shipment. But that's only the legitimate fees. Since these permits are generally issued to folks sending out containers of timber, the "mordida" (fee paid to the official to actually get the permit) could be $1,000 more. Not too bad for a container of wood - out of reach for a half dozen Ukuleles.
We did the only thing we could do - went to species that required no permit whatsoever. No CITES, no Lacey Act (U.S. only & even more restrictive). No Mahogany, no Spanish Cedar, no Granadillo, no Cocobolo, etc., etc. These were the woods we knew.
Still we were in Central America, the true treasure trove of tropical hardwoods. So we found other species. It took time to hunt them out, try them out and find reliable sources. And then by the time we started to get going again, our builder reached an age and state of health where he couldn't continue. But in that short interval when we offered our "alternate species", we learned a bit about marketing them.
Pete, I took a look at the Korina Tenor you posted about. If you haven't sold that one then folks are really missing the boat. That wood in general is an absolutely beautiful thing to look at, your boards seem especially nice, and it even has a bit of notoriety as a tonewood. Granted, it's in Gibson (I think) solid bodies guitars, but the qualities it showed there versus Mahogany, for example, would seem to indicate fabulous potential for an Ukulele. With the unique aspect, the beauty of the wood and the tone it likely has, you should be marketing it as a "premium exotic".
And marketing is always a part of making instruments. You mentioned another wood "Mgurure". In my experience a name like that will hurt sales. People can understand that a given wood will make a good instrument and look nice, but they still want to know how to pronounce it - to tell folks what it is without hesitating on how to say it. Leadwood is a bit better - you can pronounce it, but it's not too appealing.
I'd look at something the lumber industry does all the time - a practice I used to look down on: make up your own name. One that you feel reflects the qualities of the wood, either in tone or color or both. Obviously in this new environment, something like "Tanzanian
Rosewood" wouldn't be that great an idea, but as long as you include the "a.k.a."s or scientific name after whatever name you decide to use, then you aren't deceiving anyone. It's just "Pete calls it Tanzanian Blackwood". I wonder how long now before Bolivian Rosewood (not a rosewood - not threatened) starts to be called something else.
We also used to "issue a passport" with our instrument. It was a simple listing of all the species by scientific name
and with a date of manufacture in case some of those woods became restricted in the future. It had no legal standing, of course, but any official seeing such a thing would be likely to give it the benefit of the doubt, and being issued by us, it put responsibility for any misstatement on
us, where it should be, and not on the owner.
View attachment 96478
Finally, we would also fill out a Lacey Act declaration. It's a self-declaration with no permitting required. Just make sure the species you use aren't under any local origin restriction above and beyond the CITES listings. We didn't do the formal entry - just attached the declaration to the outside of the box in a plastic sleeve with another copy inside in case the outer copy was damaged. A customer could save that declaration and use it in the same fashion as our "passport".
Hope that helps a bit.
Happy holidays to all!
wouldn't that fall under the individual ownership and not a commercial transaction? Just wondering.
