Bloodwood

A dense Amazonian hardwood with a deep red colour, sold for fingerboards and small decorative parts.

It comes from Brosimum rubescens in the Amazon basin and is hard, heavy and close grained, so it polishes without finish and wears slowly under strings, which makes it useful for fingerboards and bridges. Its colour is a saturated red that ages towards a darker oxblood brown, and paler streaks are common, so boards vary considerably from one to the next. It is commonly described as bright and ringing with a hard attack, closer to ebony than to mahogany in character, and usually grouped with the other dense tropical hardwoods used for boards. It is hard on tooling and available only in limited widths.

Example: A bloodwood fingerboard gives a hard, ringing surface and a deep red colour that settles into a darker brown over a few years.

typical use: Fretboards, bridges and small decorative parts.

Bloodwood

See also