Severe Reaction to Cocobolo

Hello luthier family, I have worked with cocobolo before and I always wear a respirator and some protective clothing but this week it was hot in my shop and wore a t-shirt and never needed to wear gloves. All that changed yesterday.

I am doing a commissioned build for a professional player up in NY and I want to get this bass done because I have 3 more started and a guitar luckily none with cocobolo. I have a nice cocobolo fingerboard and the other night I was leveling it after gluing it to the neck and had dust extraction running and a respirator but that’s all. I was using a shop-vac to suck up dust and a rag to wipe down the fingerboard as I was sanding. Cocobolo loads up sandpaper so fast and makes little sticky wads in the paper it’s a pain in the butt. I washed up afterwards but after I got out of the shower all over the back of my neck, inside my arms, hands I developed a terrible raised rash and poison ivy blisters inside my fingers. Oh man this sucks! This will only get worse if I continue to use it. Luckily I have only one other fingerboard left and it’s going on eBay or wherever Tom Clemet listed his wood the other day. Scary because I have some insane Bocote I will be re-sawing up for fingerboards I hope I don’t have to worry about that.

I am buying a full Tyvek suit with hood to wear to finish the job what a bummer. I will never be able to work with it again because the reactions only get worse and worse. I have has some slight itchy reactions to some woods like African mahogany but nothing like this. I hope it’s only this wood that does this to me and there are no others I have to scratch off my list like other rosewood family woods.

I refuse to use black ebony because of all the damage to the environment and wasteful to get. Personally I feel for me it’s selfish to use it especially. I know other woods are similar but not to the extent ebony is to get the pure black stuff. I was looking for some other hard dark woods for fingerboards that were interesting looking but coco is off the list.

Tomorrow it’s off to Sherman Williams to buy the body suit and then all the filters in my dust collectors are getting changed and my shop blown out. We live we learn... Be careful people

Here are a few pics of what it can look like. Its worse on the back of my neck ugh!

 

Man this stuff is no joke. I have been taking about 4 Benadryl a day and putting on poison ivy stuff. I'll leave out the details but it's much worse now than yesterday which was worse than the day before and I have not been in my shop at all and that alone is killing me I have work piled up everywhere. If this doesn't start to get better tonight I'm off to the doctor..

 

Well I'm going to post 3 fingerboards and a nice chunk of cocobolo in strings and accessories I guess. All three fingerboards are already radiused too. Anyone interested please let me know. I think things are finally starting to fade symptom wise. I had to wear a full Tyvek suit in the shop today and basically totally clean it all out.

I posted in "other stuff" FYI..

 

Well I wound up needing to go to the doctor and get a steroid shot and then now I am still on a one week prescription of steroid pills and i still after a full week still have red marks on my neck, arms, and fingers... the suckage was at a high level and still not gone. I'm just grateful my breathing was not affected.