Koa Question

Timbuck

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As this koa i'm working on comes from the US as a gift from Chuck and VAT was paid on entry to the UK..Should there be any problems sending the completed uke back to the US. :confused:
 
I'm pretty certain koa is not on the CITES list, so you should have no problems.

Gift or purchase makes no difference - it's the species that counts. So I'd make clear in the accompanying paperwork what the woods are.

Note, though, that all rosewoods are on the CITES list, so a rosewood fingerboard might have it seized at Customs.
 
I'm pretty certain koa is not on the CITES list, so you should have no problems.

Correct. This quote from the Wood Database regarding Acacia koa:

This wood species is not listed in the CITES Appendices, and is reported by the IUCN as being a species of least concern.
 
That is not quite accurate. Actually, they did cut the forests down. I've been in and around the koa forest for over 30 years and almost no koa comes from any plantation. Planting of koa has only just begun in the last 10-20 years and any koa cut from young trees only barely even looks like koa. Koa is such a very long term future oriented cash crop that there has not been much incentive for land owners to get involved in it. Much of the koa being cut comes from what they often called "dead and dying" trees. None of these trees are plantation grown, are not replaced with new plantings, and a certain amount of them are also not "dead and dying".
 
The koa I've always bought was said to be "reclaimed" wood. I've always been curious where it was "reclaimed" from and assumed it was from old buildings and such. It makes me feel better to know that the wood was being re-purposed into ukuleles. However the original tree still died.
 
I was watching one of those "house-hunting" shows over my wife's shoulder.
One of the candidate houses on Oahu was a 1200 square foot house.
They mentioned in passing that the hardwood floors were koa.
 
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