Replies

1. 
   Kell | Jan 29, 2003 09:07pm | #1

   DJK

   There was an article in the latest Acoustic Guitar Magazine, January issue I believe, about a luthier in New Zealand who has been building guitars using this stuff.  I must say, they were magnificent in look and, evidently, have terrific tone.  Wish I was in the market.

   Kell

2. 
   Malicair | Jan 31, 2003 09:38pm | #2

   Yup this is nice stuff...

   I'm actually the poster of the add on woodweb and I just posted one on Reader Classified here with a better picture of the wood grain.

   Let me know in the other post if you have any questions about it.

   Regards

   Malicair

1. 
   macalex | Feb 01, 2003 08:56am | #3

   Swamp kauri is special, and a limited resource. Recycled kauri (from buildings) is also sometimes found on the New Zealand market. 

   Kauri (from whatever source) is an unusual, but not striking, timber. It's a bit like a mild, slightly softer, finer-grained, honey-coloured version of cherry, but with a subtle and beautiful quarter-sawn fleck that is unmistakable. Tasmanian huon pine is similar, I believe. It is sometimes available (when it appears on the market) in large dimensions, clear, straight-grained, with remarkably consistent grain and figure.

   Kauri is a Southern Hemisphere softwood. It's softer than cherry, but harder than many of the commercial tropical so-called hardwoods. It grows very slowly (100s of years to a mature tree) and to enormous sizes - or at least it used to - almost all the really big specimens were logged during the early days of pioneer settlement. Almost every museum in New Zealand has faded sepia photographs of teams of oxen or horses pulling heroic pieces of kauri out of the bush - sometimes three of four metres across the butt, and straight as a die for the five or ten metre length of the wagon or sled.

   Kauri is the timber that built early pioneering New Zealand, and that filled the distribution channels of this country's emerging timber industry, 150 years ago. It was used as masts and spars on sailing ships, as the perfect `manufacturing' timber for floor boards, furniture and joinery, and as the timber of choice of early colonial cabinetmakers. The hottest items in any auction of early New Zealand furniture will be kauri. It's the magic word.

   I recently bought a truck load of 140 year-old kauri floor-boards (I've mentioned this timber on a number of other recent posts to FWW forum discussions) and have spent the past few weekends sorting and grading and test-machining (and making a special, one-off project with) this timber. I have to say, as a one-time sceptic, and advocate for walnut, oak and cherry, I'm falling in love with kauri!

   Edited 2/1/2003 12:59:00 AM ET by kiwimac