Brw

whammo57

Kim Walker
Silver Member
I turned some Brazillian rose wood and it made me itch but not as bad as cocobolo. What's the rage about this wood anyway?? It's ugly as sin...........

Kim
 
the best in the world

i look like i am going into a radioactive area the way i now dress for brw, full face mask, rubber gloves, and a disposable 3/4 length coat. i have had a rash for months, that stuff just eats me up. but the best cut i have ever had in my hands was a brw one piece butt, not the best looking, but as stated before it sings like a canary.

i just bought a bunch of amazon rosewood, i will start cutting it soon
 
I think the rage started when someone got in trouble for having it. Something about having something that is rare makes it appealing.
 
There are other woods that are rarer than BRW.
How come there is no rage about them?
Make an un-cored straight grained Braz rosewood cue and let us know what you think of it.
It's pointless to tell someone it hits great if he has not made one out of it.
 
That's the best answer I have ever heard..............

Kim


I think the answer is somewhere in between. I have sold hundreds of brazilian rosewood squares. This was real Dalbergia nigra, not some of the suspect stuff being sold these days that is "rosewood" from Brazil.

It is like any other wood. There are good pieces and bad pieces. Some of them had a great tone. Some of them didn't. Some of them were nicely figured. Some of them weren't. Some were hard and turned clean. Some of them were soft and fuzzy. Some of what I kept stayed straight. Some of them laughed at me as they twisted. (I taught those a lesson with the band saw.)

For looks, I think nicely figured coco is better and is also very stable (in my experience at least). Luckily, coco doesn't bother me so far.

Some of the BR pieces did sing, but no better than a few of my Madagascar (not the red stuff) or Kam Phi rosewoods.

Just my opinion.

Kelly <likes parenthetical statements way too much>
 
There are other woods that are rarer than BRW.
How come there is no rage about them?
Make an un-cored straight grained Braz rosewood cue and let us know what you think of it.
It's pointless to tell someone it hits great if he has not made one out of it.

I definitely think it is an above average cue wood. But...

Do you think it is naturally/universally better than a straight grained baronii forearm? What about straight grained camatillo?
 
Kim,

BRW is scarce because of laws banning it's forestry and distribution and that's a good thing. So IMO it is low supply so the price goes up. What Chris said is very observant. When people hear BRW in a cue description it evokes some kind of special voodoo magic in there minds i have noticed like the cue should have more value. If people perceive this the cue does in fact have some more value. To me it is just another wood. I built 2 A Joint cues using it uncored in the forearms and they felt like ebony to me but what do I know!! LOL

The pieces I have worked with and seen up close always were very tight straight grained without any crazy figure. I guess people like to use them in forearms uncored for the tone or sound they make when striking a ball. I can see that. I know Darin has a ton of it and uses it in his Full Splice Cues and loves it.

Since you and I core our cues with a 30" maple dowel the point is moot concerning choosing BRW for tone.

JMO,

Rick
 
Kim,

BRW is scarce because of laws banning it's forestry and distribution and that's a good thing. So IMO it is low supply so the price goes up. What Chris said is very observant. When people hear BRW in a cue description it evokes some kind of special voodoo magic in there minds i have noticed like the cue should have more value. If people perceive this the cue does in fact have some more value. To me it is just another wood. I built 2 A Joint cues using it uncored in the forearms and they felt like ebony to me but what do I know!! LOL

The pieces I have worked with and seen up close always were very tight straight grained without any crazy figure. I guess people like to use them in forearms uncored for the tone or sound they make when striking a ball. I can see that. I know Darin has a ton of it and uses it in his Full Splice Cues and loves it.

Since you and I core our cues with a 30" maple dowel the point is moot concerning choosing BRW for tone.

JMO,

Rick


I made my observation as I was itching under my watch and inside my right elbow. The chips coming of the router hit my right arm and I was sweaty.

I was given this wood buy a player. It is some left over stuff that belonged to his father. It is 20+ years old. It is in short pieces and I am going to piece together a cue from it. It is very dark and not a wood I would have chosen to make a cue from. Mechanically, it is straight and tight grained but ugly.....

and oh yea .... itchy

What ever wood I put on my maple dowels.... it still sings nice when bounced and gives a very nice hit when finished.

Kim
 
Kim,

BRW is scarce because of laws banning it's forestry and distribution and that's a good thing. So IMO it is low supply so the price goes up. What Chris said is very observant. When people hear BRW in a cue description it evokes some kind of special voodoo magic in there minds i have noticed like the cue should have more value. If people perceive this the cue does in fact have some more value. To me it is just another wood. I built 2 A Joint cues using it uncored in the forearms and they felt like ebony to me but what do I know!! LOL

The pieces I have worked with and seen up close always were very tight straight grained without any crazy figure. I guess people like to use them in forearms uncored for the tone or sound they make when striking a ball. I can see that. I know Darin has a ton of it and uses it in his Full Splice Cues and loves it.

Since you and I core our cues with a 30" maple dowel the point is moot concerning choosing BRW for tone.

JMO,

Rick
I wonder why. It's not all that pretty and it's just another wood.
 
Last edited:
Brazilian rosewood

As some one in the thread said not all rosewood from Brazil is genuine Brazilian Rosewood (Dalbergia Nigrae) There are dozens of rosewoods from Brazil but only one Dalbergia Nigrae. How do you tell the difference; scratch it with a razor blade and it should smell like bubble gum even if it 100 years old.
Dalbergia Nigrae is fast disappearing from the market with the supply being limited to pre-SITES (or pre 1991) harvested wood. What you see today is
stump wood or salvaged wood from old buildings (that is what I sell).
The reason there is no BRW is that the demand for it is so great that all that comes on the market is sold--for good reason. There is really no substitute for Dalbergia Nigrae in a guitar or a pool cue. Consider a guitar set of two back pieces and two sides which weigh less than 2 pounds. The going price is $1000 for Master set and $900 for a AAA set. Why, because as someone said, "it sings like a bird". And, believe it or not, I can sell every set I can get my hands on. The same goes for cue size squares.
 
Back
Top