Christine

Very interesting thread, I've been looking at Rocklite for a while and wondered what it might be like. Could I trouble you with a couple of questions please Is the Sundari similar in physical properties to the Ebano? If so it sounds like an improvement over real Indian Rosewood (apart from the smell which I love when machining it) Have you had any feedback from owners of your instruments with the Rocklite boards?

Quoting Bruce Johnson Something more to add to this general discussion: A Luthier client brought me a Richlite fingerboard to radius and slot this week. I'd worked with a few smaller pieces of Richlite before, but this was the first time I recall doing a full fingerboard. A good chance to compare it against the Rocklite. If you go back to my first post, Richlite is a completely different material from Rocklite. It's a synthetic substitute for ebony, but it's made by a completely different process. Richlite is a more modern version of Bakelite, the old industrial material that was used in the structures of electrical switch gear. Richlite is made from recycled paper, saturated in black-dyed resin, and cured under high heat and pressure. Richlite has been around for 20 years or so in fingerboard blank sizes. LMII carries it in guitar and bass sizes. For comparison, a Richlite bass fingerboard blank is $26. A Rocklite bass fingerboard is $46. Richlite is also available in brown. So, here's the Richlite: Basically, Richlite is about halfway between wood and plastic. It's solid black, with no real grain structure. The lines you see in the pictures are just sanding scratches. I radiused this board with the router, cut the slots, and then sanded it with 150, 220, and 400 grit paper. Those are 400 grit scratches. You can go up through the grits and polish it up to a fairly high gloss. I didn't do that here. Note the slight greyish ripply figuring. That's not visible on the flat board, but it appears after radiusing. I assume that's some of the layers of the paper base. It's not horrible or ugly, but it's not wood-like. It machines about like soft Plexiglass. Not difficult to cut, but it sprays fine black dust and tends to heat and bind on saw blades. My slotting saw was bogging down going through it, from heat and friction. It's a not a real hard material. Sharp metal will easily gouge it or scratch it. I would rate its hardness as a little harder than Rocklite, but less than African ebony. Overall, it's black and can be made into a decent working fingerboard. But, it's not going to fool anyone for ebony or real wood. It looks and feels like a plastic-base material. I definitely would rather use Rocklite on my basses, even at the higher price. But, Richlite is an alternative.

Quoting Bruce Johnson Does the ebano have a similar density to the real thing, i.e. does it sink in water? That's an interesting question. Here's the answer, from extensive laboratory testing, just minutes ago: The Rocklite is floating, but chunks of African ebony and Macassar ebony sink. The Rocklite is just barely floating, so its SPG is probably right near 1.0. But it's clearly a little lighter weight than real ebony.

Quoting Bruce Johnson One small caution about Rocklite Ebano: I trimmed the edges of that Ebano fingerboard on the 7-string guitar this morning on my edge sander. I managed to clog up the belt. The Rocklite does have enough resin content in it that, if you lean it heavily into a powered sander, it can melt a band of hard resin into the sanding belt. It's in there hard enough that I couldn't clean it off with the sanding eraser. I'm not saying that you can't belt sand Rocklite. But you need to be careful not to generate too much heat while sanding. Sand with light pressure, moving it around. Keep cleaning it with the sanding eraser. It's about the same as cocobolo. Note from me: just use light pressure when using sanding machines that generate high heat like disk or belt sanders

Quoting Bruce Johnson Here's another Rocklite fingerboard on a neck-through flying V guitar neck that I made up for Mike Lipe. This is sanded to 150 grit after radiusing and slotting. You can see how much it really does look like ebony. When you cut it, it smells like wood, not plastic. A couple of the guys commented that it smells faintly like pot! We were half jokingly wondering if they are using hemp as the fibers to make it. Maybe?

Quoting Bruce Johnson No, good synthetic exotic woods aren't going to be the cheap option. Rocklite's Ebano (which is what they are calling the synthetic ebony) currently costs about $46 for a 5-string size bass fingerboard. In comparison, a Macassar ebony fingerboard of that size is about $42. I'd expect that their Faux Rosewood will be around the same price range, at least initially. It's a similar process. Over time, the prices for these synthetic woods will probably come down, as they build up their production and distribution. And, we'll probably see some competitors emerge as acceptance of the use of synthetic woods grows. If Rocklite sells well, there will almost certainly be an inexpensive far-eastern import version before long. That's the way the marketplace works. From my experience so far, I see Rocklite's Ebano as an improvement over real ebony, not a cheap substitute. And I mean for technical reasons, not just price and availability.

Quoting Bruce Johnson Right from their own mouths, here's Rocklite's announcement about their new Faux Indian Rosewood. Coming in January 2018: Rocklite - Environmentally friendly tonewoods & hardwoods | eco friendly ebony

Quoting Bruce Johnson Yes, Rocklite is somewhat porous. It soaks in glue just fine. I haven't tried oils, like Stew-Mac's Fingerboard Oil yet. Hmmm. I have some cutoff scraps. An interesting test would be to accurately measure a piece, then soak it in water for a while, then measure it again to see if it swells. Yes, Rocklite has a "grain" of parallel lines which look almost like it's a stack of quarter-sawn veneers. But I don't think it's really made from a stack of sheets, like Richlite or Garolite or Bakelite. From their description, it's made from "toothpicks", long splinters which are aligned. Rocklite is much more like wood than the others, in weight, hardness, porosity, etc. It doesn't really appear to have resin content at all.

Quoting Bruce Johnson An added note: Mike Lipe is finishing up that guitar neck that I showed above. He's got the dots and frets in it now. He says that he really likes the Rocklite, that it works like wood, not like plastic. He's used Ebanol and Richlite in years past. He agreed with me that Rocklite's hardness is less than African ebony, but more than rosewood. A nice workable range.

Quoting Bruce Johnson I haven't finished an instrument with it yet, but at this point, I'd be really surprised if it sounded any different from Macassar ebony. I'd say its properties are more like Macassar ebony than African ebony. It's a little softer than most African ebony. And I think that's a good thing. I showed these boards to all of us Luthiers here in the Lab, handing them a Rocklite board along with new African and Macassar ebony boards. We all agreed that the Rocklite looked, felt and sounded (by tapping) very, very close to the real thing. What gave it away was that it's so perfect. No streaks, no flaws, no weave in the grain.

Quoting Bruce Johnson I thought I'd start a thread here specifically about Rocklite, the new synthetic alternative to ebony for fingerboards. I've started working with it now on some necks for clients (other Luthiers). I'll share my observations as I go, and encourage any of you who try it to join in. Tell us how it works or doesn't work for you. First, some background about ebony and the synthetics: There is a revolution taking place in the world of ebony fingerboards. Real ebony, particularly African ebony, is getting very scarce, very expensive, and highly regulated. There are many sub-species of ebony, but the hard, dark black species are often grouped together as "African ebony". Included are Gabon ebony, Madagascar ebony, West African ebony, and others. Good quality African ebony bass fingerboards are getting difficult to find, and are often costing $100 or more. They are highly regulated by CITES. And ebony boards frequently have serious problems with cracking and warping. I gave up on using African ebony on my basses about ten years ago. Too expensive, too many problems. Macassar ebony is a somewhat different wood, not part of the African Ebony group. It's not pure black, and usually has some brown streaks. Compared to African ebony, Macassar ebony is a bit softer, isn't as brittle, machines easier, and has less problem with cracking. There's still a reasonable supply of it, and it's not too expensive. I've been using Macassar ebony fingerboards on all of my basses for about 12 years. They cost me about $40 each from LMI. Those are the two kinds of real ebony: African ebony is pure black, very dense and hard, scarce and expensive. Macassar ebony is black with brown stripes, less dense and hard, still available and reasonably priced. Synthetic Ebony: Over the years, several "synthetic ebony" products have been introduced and used for instrument fingerboards. I'll mention Ebanol, Richlite, and now Rocklite. These are three different types of materials, made by different processes. They are not the same thing at all. Ebanol and Rockwood: Ebanol has been around since the '70's, I believe, and has been used in some mass production instruments. Fender was using it for a while. Ebanol (and a few similar products) are made by taking a softer, more porous board of some other wood and soaking it under pressure with a black plastic resin. It's a better version of dying the wood, filling the pores with black-dyed resin. It makes it black and hardens it somewhat. It's generally regarded as a cheap substitute for ebony, although some people like it for what it is. It tends to look and feel like, well, a block of black plastic. On fretless basses, Ebanol fingerboards have a similar feel and sound to epoxy coated fingerboards. As a side note, Rockwood is a similar product to Ebanol, made about the same way. Rockwood is available in many rainbow colors, and is commonly sold in smaller blocks for making knife handles, pens, etc. It's made by saturating soft wood laminates with clear or tinted hard resins. Like Ebanol, it machines and feels like a block of plastic. It has a high content of plastic resin, usually a polyester. It's tough to saw, gumming up blades and smoking. Richlite: Richlite has been around for about 20 years. It's kind of a derivative of Bakelite in how it's made. Many thin layers of wood paper are saturated with black resin and stacked up and cured under high pressure. It's more like a hard black cardboard. In the world of industrial plastics, there's a similar product called Garolite. It's tough and black and looks good for flat plates. It's commonly used to make insulator blocks in electrical equipment, and insulating parts in machines. I use 1/16" black Garolite sheet as the backing when I make wood veneer pickguards. As far as I can tell, Richlite is a similar material to Garolite. I've worked with smaller pieces of Richlite, but I've never used it for a fingerboard. Like Garolite, it's shiny and black as a block or a sheet. But, it doesn't look as good when you carve it into contours, such as a radiused fingerboard. It gets greyish, and you can see some ghost lines of the layers. It can be re-coated with polyester resin or epoxy to make it shiny black again. Then it's about like Ebanol. It's strong and hard, but it's not going to fool you for ebony. It has a synthetic look. Pretty nasty to saw and machine. Rocklite: Rocklite is a relatively new synthetic ebony that's come on to the market. It's made in England, and is now being imported by LMI. Right now, they are the only source of it here in the US. It appears that Rocklite is a much more sophisticated product than Richlite or Ebanol. Their goal is to closely match the properties of real ebony. From what I understand, Rocklite is made by grinding up wood into long thin splinters, which are then packed into a mold in a linear orientation, saturated with black resin, and cured under high pressure. The process is more like MDF, but using long oriented splinters, rather sawdust. The result is a closer replication of the material structure of real ebony. And the density, hardness, etc. are all really close. It has more wood and less resin than Ebanol or Richlite. It should behave more like wood, particularly in gluing and in temperature expansion. If true, those are big advantages over Ebanol and Richlite. I have several Rocklite fingerboard blanks here in my shop right now, which are going on custom necks for two of my Luthier clients. I'll be gluing, radiusing, and slotting them over the next few days. Holding these bare boards here in my hands, I can tell you that Rocklite is very, very close to real ebony in color, weight, hardness, and overall look and feel. It's like a flawless piece of Macassar ebony, but pure black with no brown stripes. It has a fairly realistic grain and texture, but no growth rings. For reference, the Rocklite 5-string size bass fingerboard is currently $46 from LMI. That's about equal in price to Macassar ebony, and about half the price of top grade African ebony. So here's a Rocklite fingerboard on a guitar neck blank for Mike Lipe. The Rocklite blank came through sanded fairly rough, like 100 grit. It appears to be a medium density fine-grained dry wood, like birch or alder. But all black. It's not packed full of resin or wax, like cocobolo. It looks like wood. I was originally thinking that I would glue it on with West Systems epoxy, like I do with all the Macassar ebony fingerboards on my Scroll Basses. But Mike usually prefers that I use LMI's Yellow Instrument Makers Glue on his necks. So, I went ahead and used the LMI glue on this one. There doesn't seem to be any problem. The glue does sink into the surface well and grab hold. Here's a closeup after radiusing the surface in my router fixture. My router process cuts the radius as about 10 flat facets. The lighter lines are the edges of those facets. You can see that the Rocklite actually has grain. It's fine and very uniform, running along the length of the fingerboard. About like ebony's grain, although much more perfect. That's down in the wood, not caused by the router. And here it is after cutting the fret slots and sanding the surface. No problems at all sawing the slots. No binding or smoking like a waxy wood. It feels a little softer to cut than Macassar ebony, and much softer than African ebony. This is sanded with 150 and 220 to round off the facet ridges. Again, notice the grain. From here, it goes to Mike. He'll put in the inlays and fine sand it to 600 or 800. I'm not sure what he plans to do for coating on this one. Coming up, I'm putting a Rocklite fingerboard on a bass neck for Jeremy (aka FreekMagnet on here). On that one, I'll be radiusing and slotting it, then taking it all the way up to a full polish, like I do with Macassar ebony. We'll see how that works out. So far, I'm impressed. This may be the answer to the ebony problem. Not a cheap substitute, but an actual better replacement, that we may prefer over real ebony. Within a few years, Rocklite (and maybe some competitors) may just replace all ebony on instrument fingerboards. And, as they keep developing this technology, they will work out formulas for other properties and colors. I suspect that pretty soon, it'll be available with realistic looking striping for those who want it. And then, maybe they will come up with a good synthetic Brazilian rosewood. We're looking at the future of exotic woods in our business. Like it or not.

A few weeks ago before i went on holiday I was asked to start a thread about the newish Rocklite synthetic replacement s for fretboards and the like. Initially it was available only as an Ebony replacement but earlier this year a Rosewood replacement also became available. I have been using these on my current builds and have been very impressed. The topic has been discussed quite extensively on another forum but it would be nice if we had our own here so: Most of the information I have isn't my own so I won't pretend I know all this stuff, I have had the permission of the American luthier Bruce Johnson www.xstrange.com to copy his posts from another forum and share that info here with you but for now I will just paste in some posts of his with good information in them and eventually I will post some of my own with my own findings. I'll have to edit them slightly to try and keep them in context so please forgive any references that don't seem to relate to any question. I truly believe that the like of Rocklite will become the future for exotic hardwoods in musical instruments with the current restrictions with CITES.

Not much of an update today, I have a sore foot, not quite sure what I've done but probably a pulled tendon, I had to give up working today because it was hurting too much to stand on. I'll get it sorted at the hospital tomorrow, going to a gig tonight and I don't want to risk missing that LOL So I cleaned up and scraped the binding and sided of one of the bodies and that's looking good. I had hoped to get both done as well as the holes for the jack sockets drilled and the jack plates rebated flush but that is going to have to wait until I can get back on my feet. No pics today, I forgot my phone and it hurt too much to walk back into the house to get it, so next time.

No, it's tiny, I don't think you could get anything that thick through it

I'm an acetone addict It's actually a blunt needle I bought from a model makers shop somewhere or other

Evening campers For today's thrilling instalment hold on to your seats First job was to glue together one of the headstock bindings and the body binding. After that I set them aside and routed the binding rebate on the bodies, this time I left an extra half a millimetre, better to need to scrape a bit of wood and go through that again. I ran into a small problem while routing the rebate in the bodies: When I made the routing jig some years ago the base I was routing didn't have such a dramatic carved top as the twins but this time the base of the router carriage fouled on the top of the body so I had to cut a bot away to give it some clearance, after that all went well, so if you ever need to make one, bare that in mind Then after some time I took the bindings out of the formers and glued up the next lot before glueing in the new bindings, then once dry I cleaned them up and prepared the headstock for the second lot of bindings which were formed once the former was free again. I cut the mitre joints freehand with a sharp chisel then welded them to the existing with acetone before finishing off by glueing them in with CA. So at the end of the day we have two sets of binding ready to be cleaned up before I can trim the neck before fitting the fretboards and carving the back of the neck

Just lovely, I have a few chunks of Poplar burr under my bench I might have a look at them to see if I can make use of them it looks so nice, or should I say you have made it look so nice. Lucky Len!

With furniture maybe it was a long time ago but maybe 6-8 months with a couple of other smaller jobs alongside. That is very uncharacteristic of what we did but I like it, normally I wouldn't have taken on a semi reproduction design like that but it was full of challenges so I couldn't resist

You would have loved my old workshops, two large old cowsheds converted and a third as a showroom/woodstore. we had a machine room and a separate bench room which was really comfortable apart from when someone used a router, EEK! The machinery was all 1950s Wadkin all re manufactured to as new condition and was stunning to use, very heavy solid cast iron and no vibration, talk about being spoilt A far cry from my apprenticeship days of hand planing 24" Elm boards from say 1 1/2" down to 1" in an old shed. Lovely as it was I think what I have now is better suited to making basses, thankfully many of the skills I learnt as a furniture maker are transferable to guitar making or certainly the mechanics of it but there are a lot of things that are very different that I have yet to learn or gain some experience with. Thankfully this is only a hobby now and not a business otherwise I would be bankrupt in a month at the speed I'm working at. Like furniture making, anyone can make the stuff to a high standard but the real skill is in making it to that standard quickly, a pressure that thankfully isn't on me Anyway, a picture of something I made a few years ago, sorry about the quality it's a photo of a photograph. The cabinet was quite big and made with shop cut 3mm veneers of Indian Rosewood and East Indian Satinwood with Sri Lankan Ebony for inlay stringing and glazing bars, the rope twists were hand carved from solid Rosewood

Only just seen your build and was thinking that would look great with a translucent white finish and bingo there it was. I'd use a satin finish, it's a little more forgiving on softwoods which with the best will in the world are difficult to get completely flat. Mind you when I saw the first pic I thought nothing meaningful would be made from those and I was instantly proven wrong so no doubt you'll prove me wrong

Thanks, we did, with weather like that how could we not? I won't go far, I'm like a bad smell in a lift

It's a case of I haven't done this before and I don't know another way of doing it yet, I'm learning tons on this build

Sort of back in the workshop today, mostly waiting for the replacement binding to arrive but out postman was late as usual and didn't arrive until nearly 4pm so at least I can get that redone tomorrow. What I did do was rout the recesses for the control cavity covers and made a former for the body bindings so I should get those done tomorrow too

I like the adjustment in the headstock but to be 100% truthful it's for no good reason other than my first bass in the mid 70s (a Satellite) which was complete junk had a spokewheel adjuster and I've held a bit of a prejudice ever since. I do see the sense in a spoke wheel but not for every design. There's a lot of sense in that about the truss rod nut but personally I like to have a hard wearing material and use the correct tool, it seems that brass ones just get rounded off all too quickly by idiots who don't use the right tools or how to adjust the rod properly.

Well today I screwed up a little, not a disaster just a set back: I started off this morning by finishing off the tenons for the neck joints, so they're ready to glue now. After that I turned to the head stocks for the binding, my first attempt at 3 ply binding, ah so you can see this coming First job was to create a form to bend and glue the 3 x 0.5mm binding strips together, so that was made from some MDF with foam double sided tape as a gasket sort of thing to keep an even pressure while the glue set (acetone actually). Next I cut the binding strips to size and warmed them and clamped them up in the jig and warmed them again, then I loosened the clamps one at a time and with a syringe applied some acetone to the bindings which welds them together and tightened them up while making sure they were bedded down properly and left them to set for an hour before finally taking them out, so far so good. I measured the thickness of the finished laminate and it was 1.48mm, ideal I thought and routed the rebate in the headstock at 1.5mm and thankfully only at 4.5mm deep for the 6.25 binding strip. Next bit was to clean the bottom edge of the laminated strips, I did this by glueing a piece of 150 grit sandpaper onto a strip of plywood and sanded the bottom of the strip on that before cleaning off the inner corners. Finally it was glueing time so I put the strip in place and got some masking tape to hold it in place vertically with a bit left on top to flip over to hold it horizontally. I applied some thin CA and flipped the tape over and made sure the strip was well in and properly fitted. So far so good and all looked well, after another hour I removed the masking tape and started to scrape the tops of the strip, it looked great, next was the turn of the sides, ah now here it is: What was pretty much dead flush was now sticking out proud by a fair bit, well spherical objects! I scraped away to get it flush and the entire cream outer laminate was removed, I wasn't happy, I may even have sworn but I can't really remember if I did or not LOL. All I could do was remove the glued in bindings but as they were reasonably consistent at 0.5mm proud I used a 2mm rebate 5mm deep to remove the. I didn't have any more binding so that's now on order and fingers crossed will be here Friday so at least I can get it done by the weekend. Well that's something learnt, at least it only cost a little time and money not the whole neck (s). I'm not 100% sure what exactly happened yet, I'll measure up on Friday morning when I'm back in the workshop but I suspect it was the process of glueing with CA that has caused some sort of swelling. I didn't photograph the damaged sides, I was too cross so I'll leave that to you're imagination but just think a very tidy looking black banding instead of cream