I brought home from San Juan Island recently a very nice piece of Rocky Mountain Juniper. Someone had cut a large limb off of this extremely large Juniper leaving a 18 inch long stub. I cut the stub off, making the tree look a great deal better, and of course saving this precious wood for what I think will be very good ukulele tone wood.
It is beautiful tight grained and interesting wood that smells like "Pencil Cedar" It is really highly aromatic. Any one want a uke that will always smell like a cedar chest?
It is beautiful tight grained and interesting wood that smells like "Pencil Cedar" It is really highly aromatic. Any one want a uke that will always smell like a cedar chest?
This is a really long cut for my bandsaw but it handled it very well. I was able to get remarkably straight cuts. I then ran the cut off slabs through my planer to straigten them up for the day when I will sand them down to Uke top thickness.
Here is a preview of a tenor top. The wood tap tones very nicely and I suspect when finished it will be a very distinctive and beautiful top. I will probably make a treo of tenors after I have completed the 6 soprano pinecones I just started. I will use a Juniper top on one of them. This interesting wood grows in the high mountain country of the west, Only in the San Juan Islands does it grow at sea level I am told. Seldom does a tree get very large. The tree that this wood came from is the largest Juniper that I have ever seen. Fascinated with using trees from the Pacific Northwest for instruments, I am very excited about this wood.
