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Hey guys. Can anyone post a pic of what padauk looks like after it has aged? I understands it looses the bright red and turns more of a brown... is it a poop brown? Or a pretty brown
Thanks
b


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a pretty underwhelming brown. I first used it 45 years ago. it was all the rage and as far as I know nothing can stop it. I refinished a 35 year old table top a few years ago & it's still not horrible yet but it is kind of disappointing.
MM

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Mike McNerney

I've built two guitars from paduak a dread and a 00. The dread is about 2 years old, the 00 about 1. Both are laq'd with nitro. Pics attached.

Also attached is a stool i made 3 years ago, this however has an oil finish. and as you can see it is quite far along now from the original bright red of paduak.

The stool actually turned like this quite quickly, within about a year... so its my feeling that laq actually protects quite well against the UV rays that discolour padauk.

Hope this helps.

G.

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Might be an alternative fretboard material in its brown state.

If you plan your trim for the eventual brown color it will be, it may not be disappointing.Osage orange has a similar problem. Fine guitar timbers but not very showy. I'm not that fond of the bright orange color of padauk, so it doesn't bother me to see it brown out a bit.

The browns I’m seeing aren’t ugly by any means imo. Maybe the trick is starting w something w good variation of color in the grain in the first place. I’m not a huge fan of the bright orange color personally, but i put up the op because (and maybe this is because I’m just New) it has a feel to it... seems very workable, hard, but not brittle. Just an interesting wood


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Here is a parlor that is about two years since the sides were bent and about 18 months since it was sprayed with Endurovar.

Here is how it looked before finish (wiped with Naptha):


Here is how it looked after finish (roughly 4 months after pic above):


Here is how it looks today (roughly 24 months after first pic):


Hope it helps.

Brad


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It does. Does this continue to darken or is this about the extent of it??


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We used to use it a lot for all the usual tropical hardwood uses: fingerboards, bridges, head plates, etc. as others have noted, it loses its orange/red in a matter of months. The brown is very medium brown. "Baby poo" brown, some call it. As a father, I can say that is not totally accurate . Still, what defined it was a very even, featureless brown.

The more variegated brown in those pictures is not what we were getting, and more attractive than what we usually saw. That said, I never thought aged Paduk was ugly, just so different from where you started that it disappointed many students. If you plan on an even medium brown, Paduk can be an easy working, easy bending, nice tap tone, and inexpensive tropical exotic wood. I would use it for personal guitars without hesitation.


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