Purpleheart sucks!

Pete Howlett

Pete Howlett

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Anyone use this atrociously brittle and unforgiving wood? I have just finished making a wedding gift (not a ukulele) and ended up having to back-mill this stuff because it kept exploding! I've seen some people use it but I will never again. 40 years working wood, all types and this is the first time i have felt such animosity to a specie :)
 
I feel sorry for you Pete...I think you should be awarded this for your endevour.
 
Last edited:
I’ve only used a little,
I made the unfortunate decision to make a purple heart tenor as one of my first. I hated it as wood and finished about 10 ukes before finishing it. It was however my first successful attempt to hand bend a ‘matching’ pair of sides, (before I built myself a bender). I only really finished the uke because when I was a kid I bought this piece of ebony knowing that one day I was going to make instruments, it yielded two fretboards (decades later), one that was glued to the neck of this one. It plays great, sounds ok, and looks like, well not so great.
purpleheart tenor again 002.jpguke photo shoot 2 012.jpg
My piece wasn’t explosive, very hard though. For a beginner, it made carving the neck a major pain and getting the neck joint tight was also a little tougher. After carving the neck I swore I would never do it again. That was until my daughter said she wanted some in her uke, so she got a purple heart neck too. It wasn’t so bad the second time and several ukes later.
I’ve had more humidity swings in my shop in the last few months than I would like, and I have seen some of the leftover pieces of purple heart in my shop move a bit.
 
I've had a lot of success using purpleheart primarily as a laminate in maple necks (I've made thousands of them), but have also made uke bridges and fingerboards out of it for my "Build Uke" courses. It's great as a color accent, it laminates well, but I think it has a fairly high damping factor compared to other really hard woods. I do have some nice quarter-sawn boards, and I may just make a guitar or two and some ukes with it just to see. It's heavy...
 
I'm so sorry to hear that Pete, I really like the look of that wood.

Rick,
purple is my favorite color. I had always hoped to have purpleheart wood on an ukulele someplace. If you ever feel like using it again, I'll be your customer!
 
AlaskaTheo said:
I’ve only used a little,
I made the unfortunate decision to make a purple heart tenor as one of my first. I hated it as wood and finished about 10 ukes before finishing it. It was however my first successful attempt to hand bend a ‘matching’ pair of sides, (before I built myself a bender). I only really finished the uke because when I was a kid I bought this piece of ebony knowing that one day I was going to make instruments, it yielded two fretboards (decades later), one that was glued to the neck of this one. It plays great, sounds ok, and looks like, well not so great.
View attachment 53105View attachment 53106
My piece wasn’t explosive, very hard though. For a beginner, it made carving the neck a major pain and getting the neck joint tight was also a little tougher. After carving the neck I swore I would never do it again. That was until my daughter said she wanted some in her uke, so she got a purple heart neck too. It wasn’t so bad the second time and several ukes later.
I’ve had more humidity swings in my shop in the last few months than I would like, and I have seen some of the leftover pieces of purple heart in my shop move a bit.
Click to expand...
Looks great to me! Seriously!
 
Well, I have to thank you Pete for the heads up. I had my heart set on making a Purpleheart uke and now I am giving it second thoughts. Maybe in the future....someday.
 
I would use purpleheart for back and sides and pair it with spruce, cedar, or redwood top. I do have some nice nearly perfectly quartersawn purpleheart that I'm going to resaw next month. I think it deserves white binding.
 
A purpleheart and redwood combo would be quite eye-catching, especially with a highly figured too!
 
Purpleheart is hard on tools. I've used it for fingerboards and bridges on some cigar-box guitars. The color is lovely at first, but darkens to brown very quickly when exposed to light.
 
Over at Bruko they made a couple ukes out of plum. it was very lovely with purple highlights in the wood grain. I thought it would look nice with purple heart binding, rosette and headstock veneer. other than accents I find the wood a little gaudy.
 
neck blanks both ukes.jpgI have a concert set of purple heart all ready to go, just haven't gotten around to it yet. It definitely tore a bit going through the planer and jointer and I ended up just using a drum sander to bring it down to thickness. Haven't tried bending it yet. I have used it as a center strip in laminated neck and it worked well enough there.
 
I have never had purpleheart turn anything other than intense purple. Then again, it may be my finish system which allows the photo-reactive color change from gray to purple, but prevents the kind of dirty oxidization that can happen with oil finishes with some woods...though the bass I made for Jack Casady in 1971 is oiled and the neck is bright purple. Yes, it's a bit brittle, and it's hard on tools, but I think it makes for great accents. Just making some purpleheart electric necks this week.
 
I cannot abide highly figured redwood for acoustic instrument tops. It's all runout and it's incredibly weak. Great for a laminated top on an electric, but totally unsuitable for real acoustic instruments.
 
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