Hi everyone. I am relatively new to this forum and I have been playing the Irish flute for three years.
I am interested in an alternative to Cocus wood that has the same chocolate color that would be suitable for flute making. I have looked at East Indian Rosewood which is beautiful and also a “sensitizer” which rules it out for me to consider. I am open to suggestions? Thanks in advance.
Quite difficult to find but an Australian acacia called Gidgee is a marvellous wood for whistles and flutes.
Oz Whistles and Terry McGee produce instruments in Gidgee.
http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/materials.htm
Vaughan
Thanks for the reply Vaughan. I’ve seen photos of Terry’s Gidgee flutes. They’re beautiful. You’re absolutely right when you say that Gidgee is hard to come by. I’ve emailed several suppliers in Australia and none of them have been able to produce a piece large enough for a flute. Knife scales in Gidgee seem to be easier to come by at the moment. Thanks again for commenting.
Mopane is an excellent wood that looks a bit like new cocus. Some pieces can be very dark brown, but sometimes very red. I have heard that it can get very dark as it ages..
Here is a youtube clip…Playing a blackwood Gallagher but the pic is a Copley is Mopane.
Yes, Mopane does darken with time and repeated applications of oil. My flute started a medium reddish brown and in six - nine months has become more of a chocolate brown. Very warm and comfortable colors.
I think Cocus can become quite dark, or is that just a normal evolution for all antique Cocus flutes?
How about African Blackwood (Dalbergia melanoxylon), Solomon Island Blackwood ( http://www.copleyflutes.com/albums/Photos/album/Woodflutes/index.html# ), ebony?
I think Mopane looks very much like cocus.
I was just looking at two flutes. One cocus and antique the other mopane and less than 10 years.
Looking at these two flute the cocus is darker but it is also 100 + years older.
I have also seen cocus antiques that stay more red than the example before me both are reddish under light
They are both finer grained than the cocobolo and Blackwood flutes I currently have to hand.
Cocus was popular in part on account of how it sounds. I believe people thought it had a special clarity; others may have more info. If, as I do, you subscribe to the idea that different woods can have different acoustic properties (e.g. boxwood vs. blackwood), a wood that looks like cocus may not sound like cocus. Personally I don’t think mopane sounds like cocus. I like african blackwood, following Kkrell. Also cocus, as it ages, darkens to the point where it is hard to tell visually from blackwood.
It doesn’t stay that colour. Both Zac’s flute (the one in the photo) and mine (made from the same wood a little later) have darkened considerably, though remaining brown rather than black. I think Solomon blackwood is probably as close as you’ll get to the appearance of cocus, but was so smitten with the photos of Zac’s flute Dave Copley sent me that I chose it when I thought I was committed to Delrin! Which happily produced what is to me still the finest and most beautiful flute on the planet and most personal/beloved of all my instruments for the thought that went into it from both maker and player. 
Or because it was once as ubiquitously available/suitable as African blackwood more recently?
Also cocus, as it ages, darkens to the point where it is hard to tell visually from blackwood.
Hmmm, yes and no? The 1921 cocus Rudall Carte Boehm I owned briefly this year was much the same colour as my 2012/13 Solomon blackwood Copley, but you wouldn’t have taken either for African blackwood.
Personally, I think cocus has a unique sound rich with overtones in a way unlike other woods I’ve tried; although this probably matters a lot more to the player than the listener. Plus, it could just be confirmation bias on my part; cocus is supposed to have a superior tone so if I try a cocus flute and think that it does, who’s to say that it actually does and this is due to the wood and not some other factor?
Anyway as far as looks go; the nitric acid stained dogwood that John Gallagher uses is a chocolate color similar to cocus. I play a flute made out of it (the one pictured in my avatar, if you can see it well enough).
I wanted to say thank you to everyone who replied to my post. I own two keyless flutes by François Baubet in African Blackwood and mopane.
My mopane flute is more of a reddish brown color which I love. I noticed while looking at Yola and Forbes site that their mopane flutes were more of a chocolate brown and closer in color to cocus.
It’s a shame that more efforts were not made to preserve the trees (cocus) that produce such beautiful tone wood. It reminds me of the situation with pernambuco wood used to make violin and cello bows.
Cocus grows in Cuba. They currently forbid its harvest. For the future? Who knows? There were groves in Florida, but they’re mostly gone.
There is at least one nursery in Florida that was selling seedlings for the bonsai enthusiasts. If you bought one you would have to be awfully patient. . .
Pernambuco mostly grows in NE Brazil, in the state of Pernambuco. That area is currently under military law and has had a long-standing low grade insurrection going on for some years. It is worth your life to try to harvest any. An acquaintance, a bow maker, tells me there occasionally is some pernambuco that comes out of one of the Guyanas that border Brazil. Needless to say there are endless questions and CITES paperwork for the small extant stocks of the two woods.
Bob
I own two cellos bows and a violin bow from the company Arcos Brasil. The only way that Pernambuco is allowed out of Brazil from my understanding is in the form of bows for stringed instruments.
There is some padouk/padauk that is kind of a dark-chocolate color rather than the normal bright red. I think it’s a different species from the red stuff. This is much less dense than cocus (probably around 0.7 rather than 0.9-1.0), so would need the bore treated. Burmese blackwood (D. cultrata) is another possibility. It is very dark like ABW, but has contrasting grain, very pretty stuff; no longer easily saleable across national boundaries.
Edit: I found it called Burmese padauk, tercarpus macrocarpus, same genus as the African, different species.
The Solomon Blackwood mentioned earlier looks very nice, and much like cocuswood, in the pictures. I found a source on line for it (see link below). The company is based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, but the owner is from the Solomon Islands. Apparently, the local name for this wood is Tubi.
This wood is extremely hard, durable and very dark, and is one of the heaviest exotic wood known to man…
I’m not sure an extra-heavy flute is entirely optimal.
Well, I’ve got one (Solomon blackwood flute), and doubt you’d find it perceptibly heavier to pick up or hold than an African blackwood one.
I’m also reminded of the existence of ‘brown delrin’, as used in these penknife handles:
“…Features Jigged Brown Delrin® handles…”
Looks quite the chocolate coloured wood! Perhaps I should order some for my own flutes. I wonder if it can be finished as well as the black delrin, by the standard techniques used in flutemaking.
Garry
It’s about the same density as African blackwood. Somewhat heavier than boxwood.