Here are some photos of the wood selection for the rosette on the black ebony parlor. With black back and sides and a very white top the abalone and Koa will really stand out so it's important to pick very nice looking Koa wood. For the rosette there will be a ring of Koa bordered by abalone and ebony. We are going for a mottled figure in the Koa because I want it visually non-directional and to go with the jewel like look of the abalone.
Where do you find mottled figured Koa?
Here is a picture of a piece of Koa with bark which is called a live side. You can see the bark, the lighter sapwood, and inner heartwood:
If we scrape the bark off we get this:
When we slice this up we get some very promising candidates:
As an aside, this last picture looks like a plate of chocolate chip cookies to grazing livestock . This is one of the challenges in keeping Koa trees growing in Hawaii. Grazing animals love to chew the bark and soft sapwood off the living trees. Once the sapwood is cut around the base of a tree, it's dead.
This is pretty soft wood but will work wonderfully for what I want in the rosette:
On another note: All of those Brazilian Rosewood small jumbo Josies are starting to come back from the finisher. I got the first one back which has the Adi top and Bloodwood trim. I'm very happy how the Bloodwood is working with the red grain color in the BRW. Here are a couple initial pictures:
Thanks for following along!
Mark