Blue Mahoe

A special order set of Border Pipes has been added to the gallery page of my website:

Gallery

The wood is Blue Mahoe, the national tree of Jamaica. It's a very interesting wood, and made a lovely sounding set of border pipes. The coloring is very strange. As the pictures show, depending on the light, the set can look, blue, purple, brown, or very light gray.

The customer who special ordered them had seen a set of pipes made from them in Europe somewhere (he's from Germany), and asked if I could make a set from the wood. I tracked some down from:

Tropic Ventures Rainforest Enrichment and Sustainable Forestry Project.

"Tropic ventures . . . is located on 1000 acres of spectacular rainforest land in the southern central highlands of Patillas, Puerto Rico. The project's mission is to research and demonstrate the economic use of rain forest land using methods that do not destroy the forest ecology."

A fun group to work with. The woman I corresponded with calls herself "3T".

I enjoyed working with the wood, which had a slightly sweet/spicy smell when turned. They're mounted with Water Buffalo.