Is Cocobolo hard to work with?

[papomaster]

I did a preliminary version of the stand using some pine, and here are some pictures of the construction :

I glued the two "arms" on the bottom, then screwed them both to the vertical piece while holding everything in place.

Then, I put a wooden screw through the upper corner to hold the horizontal bar in place, and glued the two pieces together with the screw in.

Then, using another wooden screw, I drilled a hole in both the pyramids and the two arms, and glued them with the screw.

You can see the screw here :

Now with a holder to put some pressure:

Another view of a pyramid :

Hopefully this will be finished and varnished by the end of the week.

 

[papomaster]

Quote:

Originally Posted by swt61 /img/forum/go_quote.gif 1) It will not look anything like you're expecting once you cut it. Cocobolo is a Cream/Pink/Lavender blend when freshly cut. If you expose it to direct sunlight it will oxidize into the beautiful Rusty/Brown that you see in pics. It can take a few hours to a few days depending on the moisture of the wood,

I've finished cutting and sanding it two weeks ago, and left it at the sun since then. As you can see in the previous pictures, one side was perfectly sanded and had already oxidized (It looks like it might have been varnished but if I close my eyes, I can't distinguish any side from the others with just my fingers, so I guess it hasn't), so I only have to make 3 sides oxidize on both pieces. I left it the first week behind a window and partly hidden by a tree, so it wasn't optimal, but I've found a nice place facing south with an open window for the whole day, and it's been there for a week now. It slowly changes colors, starting from beige and brown to orange and dark brown. Nothing red yet, but I think it'll take a few more weeks to do that...

 

[Bostonears]

A few years ago, I made some custom plinths (bases) for a pair of speakers out of 12" wide X 2" thick cocobola. A plank that thick was so hard and dense that the industrial strength radial arm saw at the wood shop had a difficult time cutting through it. The resulting pieces looked beautiful, but they eventually darkened a little more than I would have liked.

 

[papomaster]

The pieces have been cut about a month ago, and I tried to put them under direct sunlight as much as I could, but we had about 6-7 days without rain since the beginning of july. During those 6-7 days, I let the wood pieces on an open window facing south the whole day and turned them everyday, and it's still brown/beige, and slowly getting orange-ish on some sides. Pretty lame.

So now I'm thinking about going the rough way. Does it oxydate exclusively with sunlight, or is it mostly due to high humidity, temperature and whatever except light's intensity? I'd try putting them directly in front of a 100-250 (whatever I find) watts lightbulb for a few hours.