Wood question

[DastarD]

He just send me a picture of roasted ash and wenge, not sure what to make of it
He said wenge could be used as body with a rosewood top, he never heard of stained walnut

 

[Jeff Siddall]

Wenge is one of my favorite woods, but again, extremely heavy. Stained walnut is literally that: walnut that has stain applied, so you wouldn't buy it that way from a lumber supplier.

 

[DastarD]

Maybe a chambered wenge body (to reduce the weight) with a rosewood top.
It is very hard to choose because I am not sure what it would look like, and then I still have to choose the neck.

 

[hennessybass]

I'd go for the roasted ash body and a solid rosewood neck...
I think that would be a good tone combo, and look great.

The J body in this video is great looking,,, and the strat body with he clear satin finish looks beautiful... at least IMO.

 

[micguy]

Walnut. A dark stain might have made it look just like Rosewood.

A lot of walnut (I’ve heard it’s the drying process) needs stain just to look like….walnut. I built a bass recently with a walnut top that turned out great, but before I stained it, the top looked pale and bland.

 

[RichterScale]

Maybe a chambered wenge body (to reduce the weight) with a rosewood top.
It is very hard to choose because I am not sure what it would look like, and then I still have to choose the neck.

That depends on what you're going for.
Wenge is just another very hard, dense, heavy wood, but doesn't look anything like rosewood.
So, if it's the rosewood look you want, without the weight, I'm voting for stained walnut. Although, the pic of the vid posted above looks intriguing. I'll have to check that out later.

 

[Jeff Siddall]

They have 2 pieces of Rosewood, hopefully could be used as a top if I deceide to do that, and matching headstock.

View attachment 4520880

Those are some nice looking slabs of rosewood!

Looks like a nice piece. I would book match the other edge personally and loose the curved eye like feature.

LOL, very politely put. I am not sure a "curved eye" is what most people would see!

 

[DastarD]

That depends on what you're going for.
Wenge is just another very hard, dense, heavy wood, but doesn't look anything like rosewood.
So, if it's the rosewood look you want, without the weight, I'm voting for stained walnut. Although, the pic of the vid posted above looks intriguing. I'll have to check that out later.

It makes it more difficult, let's just say I am all in for a rosewood top, what would be a matching chambered body? Stained walnut or stained wenge?

 

[dwizum]

Personally, I would not try to "match" the rosewood top. It will never be a PERFECT match and when things are close but not perfect it tends to draw your mental focus and magnify the differences. I feel like it would be much more satisfying to choose something that is complimentary, but deliberately different in some way. Roasted ash or a piece of walnut with the right color. It's hard to advise on this though, without lumber in hand, because it really boils down to matching specific pieces vs making generalities about an entire species.

If you're in a good working relationship with this builder, it would probably make sense to just describe your goals and preferences to them, and then ask them to suggest something. That will likely be more successful than us internet randos trying to suggest things for you which might not even make sense based on what your builder has available.

 

[deff]

A lot of walnut (I’ve heard it’s the drying process) needs stain just to look like….walnut. I built a bass recently with a walnut top that turned out great, but before I stained it, the top looked pale and bland.

Yeah that is just a clear coat. No stain involved. It didn't look gray per say, but the clear coat warmed it up a bit. It'd take some purple/red/black to get it to something like rosewood.

 

[RichterScale]

It makes it more difficult, let's just say I am all in for a rosewood top, what would be a matching chambered body? Stained walnut or stained wenge?

Hmmm, well, I can only give my personal opinion. I made a body with a walnut top half and mahogany back half. I stained the whole thing with a darker brown. Now, I'm not very good at finishing and staining, but I didn't like it. My opinion is that if you have 2 completely different woods, there needs to be a distinctive border, like a contrasting veneer sandwiched between them. Even if it's 2 halves of the same type of wood. It will never match up and look right (to me).
I'm trying to picture wenge with rosewood and I feel like they wouldn't vibe well together aesthetically. That's totally personal taste though.
The one pic posted earlier with the all rosewood body separated in the center with the thin maple veneer looked really good. Something like that could also be chambered.
If this was the look/wood choices I was going for, the way I would approach it is to do a black walnut body with a little chambering, a rosewood top and a thin veneer to separate. With the right stain and piece of walnut, it would be hard to tell it's 2 different woods.
Also, wenge is pretty oily and doesn't really like stain. And it tends get really dark when stained.

 

[DastarD]

Personally, I would not try to "match" the rosewood top. It will never be a PERFECT match and when things are close but not perfect it tends to draw your mental focus and magnify the differences. I feel like it would be much more satisfying to choose something that is complimentary, but deliberately different in some way. Roasted ash or a piece of walnut with the right color. It's hard to advise on this though, without lumber in hand, because it really boils down to matching specific pieces vs making generalities about an entire species.

If you're in a good working relationship with this builder, it would probably make sense to just describe your goals and preferences to them, and then ask them to suggest something. That will likely be more successful than us internet randos trying to suggest things for you which might not even make sense based on what your builder has available.

True, but I still value everything you guys/girls throw at me :-D

 

[hennessybass]

Agree with @dwizum - I would not try to match anything, because it will never match. I would try to pick things that complement each other.

Every single piece of wood will be different (even within the same species), and it's kind of a shot in the dark when you put a finish on a piece of wood.
Even if you pick a piece of rosewood for the body, and then later find a piece of rosewood for the neck, they could look very different from each other.

Also agree with everything @RichterScale said in post #51.

 

[RichterScale]

On second thought, doing a walnut body with a rosewood top might look off. They would look close but just off enough that it might not look good.
I would either do a contrasting wood body with a rosewood top, or just do all walnut and stain it to look like rosewood. Depending on the look you're going for.
Or, you could do all rosewood, chambered with the light veneer in the center, if you can source blanks thick enough and wanna cough up the $$$.

 

[DastarD]

The rosewood picture I posted is all he has, not 5cm thick but enough for a top.

 

[21DaHoagie12]

Here’s an example of rosewood facing over a mahogany core with a maple veneer (yes, there is a maple center strip, but you get the idea) .. definitely a handsome combo if you ask me, but it’s not the lightest combo of woods; got some weight to it for sure.

 

[RichterScale]

That does look nice.

 

[Beej]

I'll add in another pickle. If you want that deep chatoyance in the wood (I did it again), which is so striking, you really can't use stain or dye on the wood.

Chatoyance is a loaner from the world of jewelry and refers to how the light is reflected deeper in the grain of the wood due to varying differences in the density of the fiber structure within. When something has a lot of chatoyance, you can hold it in your hands and move it around, and the light will get caught in there and reflect as you move it, giving the appearance of depth and movement in the grain.

Rosewood can have a lot of lovely chatoyance, and so can walnut. Roasting walnut increases the chatoyance and makes is a bit more eye catching. Stains and dyes really reduce the effect and make the overall piece seem visually "flatter". The trick is, they can really enhance the grain and make it very striking, so it has it's own attraction. Stains contain much thicker particulate matter whereas dyes are much finer and the particles absorb down further into the wood, so dye can be a better choice to retain chatoyance in the wood.

Walnut is a yellow-brown and rosewood is a red-brown. They can work together and sometimes look nearly the same, but they can also have very different overtones that make them not mesh so nicely. Rosewood also tends to be much darker than walnut and depending on the piece, rosewood can go very dark with finish, almost black. They might look nice together, say a rosewood cap on a walnut body, but you'd really have to have it in front of you and wetting it with white spirits to see how the colour goes together. It's one of those things where if I was doing it, I'd be looking at it under different lighting too - LED, fluoro, sunlight to see how they play together.

Looking at the pics you posted above with the bookmatched rosewood and the roasted ash and walnut (definitely not wenge in that pic), I think the rosewood and walnut wood look great together, though they would not match in visual "darkness".

I also just want to acknowledge the difficulty in your decision. Every time I build a bass, I suffer through this same process. There are a few of us here with that problem.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

Also, you can change the color a lot with a transparent finish. That is, a mostly clear finish with a bit of amber or brown added. You can darken it, change the shade, bring out underlying sub-colors.

Here's one of my AMB-2 bodies in bare medium-weight walnut.

And here it is with a transparent "Old Dark Walnut" finish applied. I could have adjusted the tints and brought it closer to rosewood color, if I wanted to.

Here's another one. Walnut, but it ended up fairly close to rosewood color when finished.

My point is: Pick the body wood primarily for its structural characteristics; strength, weight, machinability. Don't get too hung up on matching color perfectly, because the finish can adjust that.

 

[Beej]

I'm sure they ship, but they are a major supplier, so they are unlikely to ship anything less than a bundle (4'x4'x12'). They allow locals to pick through the piles and call it "retail" but they aren't a regular retailer per se. Even when I buy one or two boards, I do it via purchase order and pay their invoice cash.

The roasted walnut guy is a smaller local supplier, but again he only sells full boards between 72 and 96". The odd time I see shorts there but they are cutoffs rather than his main product. He's a boat building supplier and I don't think he normally ships stuff, I'm sure 99% of his business is local.