tone woods genral pricing?

[earldunk]

I am currently in a heckling dead lock for a piece of timber that looks stunning its a quilted walnut according to the guy selling it seen it today and it is nice he wants £300-£400 for it because he says its very rare ( its already book matched), hes given me 3 days to put an offer in for it, it has no knots or cracks and fits my new shaped template ( just card at the moment, that is the size of a les paul type body , sor of a hybrid between LP, iceman and a horses head). and enough wood left to make the wings for the headstock and to cut all the caverty covers as well. I got a well figured peice of quilted maple a few months ago for £125, to be honest i have not got a clue about wood prices. The guy selling them knows his wood and feel really out of my depth, the guy who introduced us says he knows his s##t but can be a bit ruthless when it comes to his money.

[tippie53]

something like that in the states would be in the $150 range

[B. Howard]

Without seeing it I cant really say but I can say that Walnut is not known for a quilted figure so that makes it a rarity, perhaps one of a kind piece of wood. I have seen nice slabs of rare and unusual wood sell for very high amounts in my former career as a furniture maker. Figured book matched slabs and flitches of figured walnut start off at about $25 BDF and if the piece is as stunning as you describe could easily go double that.

'Walnut' is a general term. Is it US eastern black walnut? Is it Peruvian walnut? Bastogne walnut? Claro walnut (Oregon Black).?
The latter three, if displaying outstanding figure, could very well sell for $200 or better. Do you have photos?
Have you done Google searches for pricing on comparable wood?
-tommy

[earldunk]

It's been sold , had a email earlyer today, he got an offer that he could not refuse , there was no way my wife would let me buy it this moment in time we had to take our car to be fixed today and it was not cheap. Gota wait another month to get my pickups for my current project. I have been looking at prices to buy tone woods in the UK, the guy said it was a master wood because of the unusall figure for a walnut , so I checked out similar type woods and they do cost a lot, guess you know the better the figure / more unusall the price goes up.

[earldunk]

LCtop3883.jpg

Not got a picture of the wood but this is very close except it had a more quilted look and this type of pattern was tight in the middle and cascaded out, this is only a vanneer on the picture below the actual wood as i said was enough to make a whole solid body guitar and some and to me looked much more impressive. He told me he has some contacts in Poland that have some amazing woods and will sell at a cheaper price ( though he said i would be hard pressed to find one as nice as his in my price range).

I still have my quilted maple top as a start for next years project and have my evh musicman guitar kit experiment on for now. It will have to be a walnut type wood with the maple and i like the idea of having the two woods being mixed on the top.

The biggest problem i have is the lack of tools, im slowly building them up . I have the basic ability to cut the guitars out and shape them and route caverties my confidence is at about 65% on bodys and 10% on necks i have been making and shaping practice necks out of pine. what i have works for me at the moment but its a very steep learning curve , don't think the wife would be impressed if i splashed out for tools in one go. ( and my pals bansaw is a godsend all I have to take along is blades.)