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Pale moon ebony fretboard9/20/2023 ![]() As a large user of Ebony, Taylor saw firsthand the coming shortage of Ebony. Taylor Guitars Ebony ProjectĮnter Bob Taylor, of Taylor Guitars. For years, the majority of the Ebony trees that were cut were left to rot on the forest floor-just because their wood wasn’t completely black-colored. What’s worse, it’s impossible to tell what color the wood is before cutting the tree. The problem is, only a small percentage of Ebony trees have fully black wood. And who can blame them-deep black Ebony is stunning. Back In Blackįor centuries, musical instrument makers have insisted on only using Ebony that is a uniform, jet black color. This popularity, combined with the fact that the Ebony Tree is slow-growing, have led to a shortage. Ebony is also used as a tonewood for the back and sides of acoustic guitars, but by far the most common use in instruments is for fingerboards.Īs a visually beautiful wood, Ebony has also been used for high-end furniture, piano keys, and decorative objects. ![]() This density makes it extremely durable, and as a result has been prized for centuries as the premier wood for stringed instrument fingerboards. It has the distinction of being one of the few woods that actually sinks in water, instead of floating. It has a deep black color, and polishes to a smooth shine. Ebony Wood BasicsĮbony is a dense, tropical hardwood native to Africa, Asia, and South America. To understand Non-Traditional Ebony, and the differences between it and regular Ebony, we first need to understand Ebony wood. Non-Traditional is the term we’ll use to describe Ebony that isn’t a deep, jet black color. We’ll also talk about some of the benefits and drawbacks of guitars with Ebony fretboards. In this article, we’ll discuss the current state of Ebony wood used for guitar fretboards, and why you’re likely to find one of these “non-traditional” types of Ebony on your next guitar. But today’s Ebony guitar fretboard is showing more and more visual variation, so much so that it has a host of new names: When we think of an Ebony fingerboard, we usually think of a smooth, jet black guitar fretboard. That might sound kinda fussy, but it's so much nicer and easier to work with nice flat stock, especially with a fret board. Whether its cut it now or later, I'd probably use 3 stickers (1 towards each end and 1 in the middle) between the individual boards and sandwich the package between two flat and straight boards with some weight on the top and let it sit for awhile and give the moisture level a chance to balance out to your area. I always like to have some extra width so I can shift the fret board around a little bit to get the nicest grain orientation and avoid any ugly along the edges. It really depends on the billet and what type of saw you'll be using to re-saw it how wide the kerf is and how straight the cuts are. I think, depending on how the billet looks, I might cut one slice 2-1/3" wide from the best looking side, and then cut the remaining ~3" wide billet into four or possibly five more fretboards.Ĭutting it that way, depending on the grain orientation, might give you 4 flatsawn boards and 1 quarter-sawn board or vice-versa. As already mentioned, 2-1/3" is cutting it mighty close, you might have as much as an 1/8" to work with on a Tele fret board.
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