What type of wood could that be?

Joralin

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 21, 2020
Messages
155
Reaction score
65
I wondern what type of wood this ukulele is made of.

Its probably not acacia, cause its a "Bruko" and i never seen them use this wood.

The back is Mahogany and looks very different.

Maybe "flamed mahogany or cedar?

View attachment 128767Any idea?
View attachment 128768
 
Links will not work for me. Did you use the insert image icon above the text box?

UU Image icon.jpg



This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly Grove near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 4 acoustic bass ukes, 12 solid body bass ukes, 14 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 39)

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers
 
Yes, i used that icon. Hmm... Here i try again:

s-l1600.jpg
s-l1600 (1).jpg

Another wood that it could be is "Gabun" or "Ovangkol".
Well or just any other wood growing in europe :)
 
Last edited:
The back looks most like khaya or sapele, both of which sometimes get scooped up into the more general name of "ribbon grain mahogany," though neither is a true mahogany. It doesn't look much like Honduran mahogany but that's not a big deal as both khaya and sapele can be very good both tonally and structurally.
 
Last edited:
The back looks most like khaya or sapele, both of which sometimes get scooped up into the more general name of "ribbon grain mahogany," though neither is a true mahogany. It doesn't look much like Honduran mahogany.

I was actually thinking that too and almost went back and changed my original reply. Honduran mahogany doesn't usually have that striping.

For others reference here is a photo of the mahogany top of my taylor 324.

20200808_194047.jpg

Note the even color all the way across.

And here is a photo of the back which along with the sides is made of sapele.

20200808_194105.jpg

Note the striping.

The overwhelming majority of the time if a uke or guitar has a different wood for the top than back/sides the top will be a softwood (e.g. spruce or cedar) and the back/sides will be a hardwood (e.g. mahogany, rosewood, maple, walnut, etc). When there are two different woods and both are hardwoods its usually to control costs and/or use a more sustainable species on the back and sides. My taylor 324 pictured above is an example of this as are the Kanile'a Oha series ukes with their koa tops and mahogany backs and side (in this case mahogany being less expensive than Koa keeps the cost down). Cherry and ovankal are both woods that are generally used to substitute for more expensive and/or less sustainable woods and so it is unlikely that they woud be used just as a top woods. None of this is too say that these less expensive woods are objectively not as good, they just tend to be used for the reasons mentioned.
 
Last edited:
They have some mahogany/cedar instruments in their website right now. If we can forgive the sapele back as mahogany, I'd guess that top was cedar before I guessed spruce.

That said it's a big hard to really see the top in that pic, at least for me. Maybe a few close up in focus photos could settle this.
 
I saw a photo of sapele the other day, which said that it's similar to mahogany but has a more striped look, so I'm pretty sure the body is sapele. I'm not sure about the top, could be cedar, but it seems to have more figuring in the grain than I've seen before.
 
Do you know how old it is? While the darker color looks like cedar something about the grain kept making me think it was an old piece of spruce. For some reason I was thinking it was vintage but looking back at the original post I guess I made that up. So yeah, unless it is over 20 years old, it is likely cedar.
 
Last edited:
Curly maple?

C4C014E7-3DCC-464F-8080-A78ABEBAFEF3.jpg
 
Curly cedar and curly redwood tend to exhibit wider, gentle "curls," not the tight sharp curls you can get in hard maple. If that top is a softwood, the figure we're seeing is probably medullary rays (visible in cedar and redwood sometimes when they're well quartered) vs actual figure from curly grain.
 
Curly cedar and curly redwood tend to exhibit wider, gentle "curls," not the tight sharp curls you can get in hard maple. If that top is a softwood, the figure we're seeing is probably medullary rays (visible in cedar and redwood sometimes when they're well quartered) vs actual figure from curly grain.

I agree with this. Those are rays not curl like in curly maple. I'm 99.9% sure that is a softwood...again, cedar or possibly spruce if it's old....could be some other softwood too, but those two are the most common. A hardwood top on a mahogany or sapele body would be extremely unique. I guess it's a Bruko and they do all sorts of combinations so anything is possible, but as they say in medicine, when you hear hoofbeats think horses not zebras.
 
Thanks for the help guys.

The top is probably cedar, and the back mahogany. Maybe the cedar is flamed or something like that, but there is a cedar top ukulele on their website that looks similar.

The back is definitively mahogany, it looks similar to their "br
 
Last edited:
What wood this is I think I know.
Its home is in the forest, though.
It will not mind me stopping here
To watch the woods full up with snow.

With apologies to Robert Frost. :eek:
 
Thanks for the wood info! Do you have any idea where I can buy similar wood? I really like the texture its awesome. I would want to do some turning with it!
Do you recommend wood turning with this? I am mainly looking to create wooden ornaments & mini guitars.
 
Top Bottom