Stats on Kouki?

Building/Repair
#1

Does anyone know the statistics on Kouki? specific gravity, janka hardness, etc. I have access to lots of different ‘exotic’ woods and their statistics, but have not been able to find anything on Kouki or Redsander.

Read somewhere that Kouki (Redsander) is Eastern India Sandalwood, and that it is illegal to export as a wood product, but haven’t been able to confirm this, nor find any stats on that either.

The best acoustic guitars were always made out of Brazilian Rosewood which is also restricted now, and there has been lots of effort put into finding a replacement. From a looks standpoint as well as from a sound perspective. Just wondering if I can apply any of that research here.

#2

Hi Raymond,

I wish I did. I question whether kouki is indeed redsander. A friend of mine told me redsander is soft, whereas kouki sinks in water. That’s all speculation. I’ve never seen redsander in person.

Considering that both redsander and kouki are endangered, it is most likely the same thing. It’s just I’ve never seen a definite english/scientific name for Kouki, so I can’t be sure.

#3

In my search I ran across something that said kouki = redsander = Eastern Indian Sandalwood. It warns not to confuse with Western Indian Sandalwood which isn’t a true sandalwood and is quite soft. I found (Santalum album) statistics and it is quite hard, dense and rare.

I friend of mine made a guitar from it and told me it is much harder than East Indian Rosewood or Padauk. It is hard to come by, but what I was looking for was something with similar properties. The closest thing I came across was Osage Orange which is supposed to be the hardest wood in North America. Starts out light yellow brown, but turns brown as it ages. If it has any affect on sound quality though it would almost have to be the neck.

#4

if i can jump on this band wagon and ask another query which may help your project planning as well?.. to my mind if kouki is the best for sao,it must be high density to resist warping,then i assume the same wood would be good for dou as being dense it will not absorb much sound and echo more,
however i have heard wether one has an expensive kouki shamisen or a cheaper one ,the dou is almost always karin wood, assuming karin is less dense which stands to reason, then they? are saying less dense wood has better acoustics, can anyone confirm??
also this suggests most quality shamisens will have a different colour wood and grain between dou and sao??

#5

I’ve heard that older shamisen or really high end shamisen use Kouki for both sao and dou, which leads me to believe that it is simply a matter of cost and availability. Less expensive shamisen use Karin for both sao and dou. Having done some woodworking in the past it is fairly easy to tell the difference, which makes me wonder if using Kouki for the sao, is a matter of sound, that the sao is more visible, or the size of the tree required for the sao is less than the dou. Or maybe some combination of the three?

If you use the same finish on both the Kouki is quite a bit darker and redder, but I’ve seen a couple of more expensive shamisen and they seem to use something to redden and darken the oak so that it does not stand out as different at least in terms of color. I also have a Karin shamisen as well as an oak bedroom suite, and the shamisen is quite a bit darker than the dresser.

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