Members guitarcapo Posted April 27, 2014 Members Share Posted April 27, 2014 I just snapped this lot of 37 Madagascar rosewood fingerboards for $6 a board and free shipping. Something might be fishy........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted April 27, 2014 Members Share Posted April 27, 2014 Good luck. Let us know what you think when it arrives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Idunno Posted April 28, 2014 Members Share Posted April 28, 2014 Don't sweat it. Probably just some CITES cops planting contraband bait trails. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members guitarcapo Posted April 28, 2014 Author Members Share Posted April 28, 2014 I think that was the stuff that Gibson got in trouble for IMPORTING (or was it ebony?) But technically THEY are selling it to me so THEY are responsible for it being legal...not me receiving it. Usually committing a crime isn't the best way to catch criminals anyway because it's entrapment. Also the material is already in the USA traveling to another part of the USA so no importation laws are violated by me which is what they got Gibson on. BTW you can buy antique elephant ivory jewelry in lots of antique shops here in Florida. No problem. Just forget about importing the stuff. Also I notice there's a healthy trade of Brazilian rosewood guitar sets on Ebay which I believe is totally banned for import or export regardless of how it's cut or whether it's a finished product or raw wood. They might want to get cracking on that first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members guitarcapo Posted May 2, 2014 Author Members Share Posted May 2, 2014 Well they arrived today. Quality stuff. Straight and quartersawn. Maybe 3 or 4 have pin knots that will have to be hidden with inlay but most are clean. I'm happy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Idunno Posted May 3, 2014 Members Share Posted May 3, 2014 Good deal, then. Congrats. Now all you gotta do is put guitars under them. Piece of cake. Reality of it being you're gonna sell them for the mark-up? If so, then you need the paper supporting the legality of the lot? I guess that puts you on the hook like the source you bought it from if resale is the intent. Anymore, I think making guitars from plentiful un-protected species is the wave of the future, or should be. With the world diminishing to a global interpol where uniformed graft is the new economy(ies), best not to get anywhere near their targeted interests. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members guitarcapo Posted May 3, 2014 Author Members Share Posted May 3, 2014 I'm just a hobbyist buying up wood for my retirement when I can spend more time and effort building them. I give guitars away as gifts and have a few I play as a hobbyist. I don't deal in wood or sell guitars on the open market and certainly don't profit from illegal trade. To be clear: buying and selling rare wood within the United States is not illegal. (Just type "Brazilian rosewood" on Ebay and you'll see pages of raw wood and products for sale). The IMPORTATION and EXPORTATION across international borders of woods that are CITES regulated is (among those nations electing to participate in CITES) ....and THIS is what Gibson was nailed for. You can walk into any antiques store and buy ivory jewelry...it gets even mores even more complicated though: CITES can be ignored by governments that choose not to participate in it. Basically a country whose economy will suffer is not banned from exporting something if they wish to...but countries that choose to participate might ban IMPORTATION of that same wood... and if they all stick together....the country that chooses to EXPORT the wood might have no market. Which brings us to a curious situation in Brazil: Apparently there's lots of buildings built from Brazilian rosewood around. Also lots of stumps of old felled Brazilian rosewood trees. And of course vintage milled lumber from before CITES. There are programs going on right now where this "dead" wood is salvaged and given "visas" for export to America. The visas create a "tax" which goes to the government purchasing land for preservation. Similar programs have been attempted in Africa where confiscated poacher's ivory has actually been sold to purchase land for elephants. THIS seems to make more sense than just burning a pile of tusks worth millions in a poor country in terms of conservation...but of course it's controversial, with claims of government corruption and it preserving a market demand for ivory. Most of the newer wood you see today have these visas for export. Gibson's problem was that the wood they had in storage didn't have these visas. (or more accurately not the correct visas) because the ebony wood they received for fingerboards was not "veneer" but instead thick "lumber". Bear in mind that this had nothing to do with ebony being an extinct species. Instead it had to do with India not wanting raw lumber exported without labor adding value to it. It was more of an attempt to improve labor within the country. the Lacey Act requires wood imported into America not violate laws of the exporting country. This is actually a controversial law in that it uses the laws of other countries to determine USA law. Some believe this law could be Constitutionally challenged on these grounds. Finally....the reason tree species are going extinct has very little to do with guitar builders....or all woodworkers. Some economists argue that giving a tree VALUE by allowing it to be marketable is actually the BEST way for the trees to survive. Farmers that "slash and burn" whole forests for cattle grazing, urbanization, and farming is the real problem. creating a situation where the trees have no market value only adds to the problem.....If a local village can make $20,000 felling one tree....that's a lifetime of farming. They might leave the whole forest alone instead of going through all that effort tearing up the forest and farming to make at the end of it all LESS $$$$. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Idunno Posted May 4, 2014 Members Share Posted May 4, 2014 G-capo, I read the Gibson debacle and have the CITES regulatory considerations/requirements somewhat fresh in memory. IOW, your take and understanding of it all is also my own. No stones being thrown in your direction to catch or dodge. The entire protected wood species industry leaves me sour on using any of it to fabricate any product with. I'm currently of the opinion that there are other non-traditional species plentiful enough to harvest and render to imitate the more traditional species, in color and structural integrity, to give the endangered stuff time to recoup. Why that has not occurred at this point tells me that the market for the endangered stuff has not been duly trounced by the authorities. IOW, make illegal all consumption and the harvesting will simply dry up due to lack of demand. Yes, there will be black market forces at work initially but, being a highly visible final product, the risks of exposure would render even that market prohibitive. Simply make any consumption illegal and be done with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members guitarcapo Posted May 6, 2014 Author Members Share Posted May 6, 2014 The problem with making consumption prohibited 100% is that it really doesn't save the trees. Because the rainforest is still getting burned away by farmers to create grazing land for cattle. Rainforest soil is very infertile because of the diverse ecosystem that consumes every last bit of nitrogen in the soil. After 2 years the farmers move on....leaving a dry brown patch behind. Now if there was some motivation for these same people not to destroy that forest for the short-sighted goal of feeding cattle....say an ECONOMIC motivation like one or two trees being worth more than all the cattle graizing...maybe it would help. On top of that if stump wood and lumber salvaged from an old church or schoolhouse in Brazil can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars....wouldn't it be advatageous to sell that wood and use the money to buy up land for preservation? All of the Brazilian rosewood I own was milled by a classical guitar builder (from Brazil) in the 1970's. That's why it's quartersawn and not stump wood. Some is also salvage wood. His son inherited it and in the early 1990's he sold some to me. According to him, no one is chopping down live Brazilian rosewood trees as we speak on some sort of black market, then kiln drying the wood and shipping it via secret submarines to America. According to him that would cost a fortune in time and money. There's too much processed lumber all around Brazil to need to do that. Apparently this guy was one of 4 people licensed by Brazil to export Brazilian rosewood. He told me "visas" cost something like $40 a set. He also told me that Martin only wanted to buy visas from him to use with wood they already have and not actually purchase his wood....which he refused to do.Most of the Brazilian rosewood you see on Ebay has probably gone through him. His point was that a "visa" is pretty loosely assigned....it isn't set to a piece of wood as it's exported. It's sold by the Brazilian government to allow a certain amount of wood to be represented. Simply making Brazilian rosewood illegal everywhere won't save the rainforest. It's like eating 7 Big Macs and washing it down with a "diet" Coke to watch your weight. It doesn't address the problem nearly as well because it DEVALUES the trees even more. There's no motivation for governments and citizens to preserve something with no economic value. They'll find another way to exploit that resource. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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