frankp63

Jeff's book, "Chairmaking and Design" taught me more about attention to craft and detail than most general woodworking books I've read (and I don't even make chairs!).

I'd be very interesting to read anything he puts his pen to.

I'm hoping the author is just looking to gin up a lively discussion. Personally, I don't think ebony is particularly critical to guitars. I'll take rosewood, maple, and even walnut fingerboards rather than ebony. Even for mandolin bridges, I've long preferred maples and various other hardwoods for their tone rather than ebony.

And little real ebony is uniform black so it ends up being stained anyway.

And frankly, if you look at the larger commercial makers and some of the composite materials and designs they're using, you get the distinct impression that preserving the use of traditional materials is not particularly high on their priority list anyway.

If anyone thinks a buyer is going to choose a Taylor instrument simply because it uses ebony, I respectfully disagree.

When you consider all the things wealthy people dedicate their cash to, I think Taylor deserves credit here.

I don't know about others, but I read Fine Woodworking to get away from the suffocating politicization of absolutely every damn aspect of our lives. Let's hope it stays that way.

I'll bet the lawyers made sure there wasn't a single woodworker on that jury and instead chose people predisposed to be frightened by "loud, scary power tools". That's how the justice game works; tell me the outcome you want and I'll bargain for a group of people likely to hand it to you.

I wonder if this inventor has ginned up business by farming himself out to lawyers as an "expert witness" and ends up with a cut of that settlement?