Guitar making and the Lacey Act in the news again. . .

[Bryan Bear]

This type of thing could easily get political, let's not do that here. I'm posting this because it will probably be of interest to many of us, not to poke a bee hive.


http://nwnewsnetwork.org/post/music-woo ... rs-guitars

Lacey has some problems but I'm glad that it has provided some teeth to punish poachers and their willing customers. I am sad that it is associated with the musical instrument industry (of note PRS is not implicated but the media association is not good for our craft).

[Clay Schaeffer]

It is possible the sawmill owner believed he was buying legally harvested wood. Most sawyers don't visit the sites the trees are harvested from. The article said he sold it for 3 times what he paid for it. I would think that was a reasonable amount for processing the lumber. This was not an exotic import, but a rather common domestic species, with less common figuring. If the Feds went after the sawmill for buying the wood, why not go after PRS for buying the wood?
If the Feds have evidence the mill owner knowingly bought stolen wood then he should certainly be prosecuted. If he unknowingly bought it, pleading "not guilty" as he has done, is a reasonable thing to do. It would be interesting to know what the facts truly are.

[Bryan Bear]

The quote in the article implies that he did know but claims to not. I would (like to) think that they would not level charges without some evidence. Though, with my limited understanding of Lacey I suppose they could. They are not (currently) charging the two buyers and PRS even cooperated in the investigation. I suppose they could name them later as evidence is discovered though.

Hopefully this is a case where the law is being applied to the people who did wrong and giving the unknowingly guilty buyers a pass. I think that is the approach we would all like to see rather than heavy handed confiscation of our private stashes. . .

Being a low profile story (not involving any Kardashians) new info on the case may be hard to come by. We may never know what proof, if any, there is that the mill owner was in cahoots. I know everyone is innocent until proven guilty but my guess is that they tracked down a few of the poachers and they spilled the beans about the arrangements. They don't name the poachers in the article; who knows maybe they cut a deal wight them. There are probably lots of people willing to steal trees if someone is willing to pay, perhaps they want to come down hard on the people paying them to try to clean up the market. Keep in mind, this is all just me talking. I know no details past what is In the article.

[David King]

I've heard so many rumors about the pilfering of maple trees out of NW forests, both public and private to meet the demand for curly and quilt that I have no doubt this happens all the time. More than one wood supplier has told me the one about how his man at the pulp mill pulls those quilted logs off the truck at night and brings them straight to him before they can dry out."You'd hate to see those logs go to pulp wouldn't you?" No harm done etc. I'm now beginning to wonder about whether those logs ever made it onto the pulp truck in the first place.
The fact is the NW timber industry has been in a crisis for nearly 3 decades and when there is no work to be had and no way to support your family you probably do the best you can.
That said everyone wants the "5A" quilt, that goes for the Chinese mega factories as much as for PRS and the home-based luthier. Scarcity will only drive more folks to desire the ever rarer commodity so don't be too surprised to hear more of these stories as the price of maple continues to go up. It's too bad that "captive breading" of quilted maple isn't going to work the way it did for the California condor.
Personally I'd love it if PRS put a limit on the number of their guitars any person could own. You can't play two at a time and you certainly don't need 5 or ten of them.

[Clay Schaeffer]

"Personally I'd love it if PRS put a limit on the number of their guitars any person could own"

How would you feel if the government put a limit on how many guitars you could own? I hope this country never comes to that.

I exchanged several 2X8X10' boards of curly maple for an equal number and size of straight grained wood. The pieces were being used for door trim and curly wood is a pain to mill and finish so the shop was happy to make the swap. I wouldn't doubt that the quilted wood was headed for the pulp mill, but pulling logs off at night still sounds a bit shady.

[David King]

As a builder I would rather have my meager output go to players rather than collectors. Do I have the right to be prejudiced against collectors when I sell a guitar? That's an interesting question.
As a builder do I have any responsibility to help manage a scarce resource? Does that responsibility change when I build 100 guitars a year or when I build 100,000 or 10,000,000?
I'd love an answer to that.

How would you feel if the government put a limit on how many guitars you could own? I hope this country never comes to that.

I imagine we all agree with you there but I doubt the "government" cares how many guitars anyone owns and I doubt it ever will. (Rhetorically they do seem to care about who owns nuclear warheads, shoulder-fired anti aircraft missiles, how many wives we can have and the like, how can that be fair? Who is this "government" anyway?)

Is it fair that a few locals with trucks and chainsaws can cut prized hardwoods on public lands for personal gain? Of course it is if they follow a specific regimented procedure to harvest those trees. If they don't follow the rules, is it fair to expect anyone else in the chain of procurement to determine the legality of that wood? Legally I expect the answer is "if you honestly didn't know or made an error the first time around you probably won't be prosecuted". Morally I imagine that the obligation to exert due diligence weighs a little heavier on everyone down the line.

Maples aren't about to go extinct and even if we cut every last quilted maple on the planet I imagine they would come back quickly as soon as human kind has left the planet. The problem is that the quilted maples are just sitting there, easily recognizable, waiting to be cut when no one is looking. Like a sack of coins inadvertently left on the sidewalk in front of the bank. The problem is when one sawmill/ supplier is willing to look the other way and do business. When one factory has access to a slightly cheaper and better supply of wood than the others and the deck is slowly stacked -that can irk our sense of righteousness. It would be nice if we didn't have to depend on an imperfect government to police our marketplace in such a crude and ineffectual way but it's pretty clear to me that the marketplace doesn't really have much incentive to police itself yet.
I hope I'm keeping this post a philosophical one and not straying into the political or ideological vorboten land. I think these are things luthiers and amateurs ought to think about and discuss openly just to know how we might deal with them in an uncertain future.

[Clay Schaeffer]

"As a builder I would rather have my meager output go to players rather than collectors. Do I have the right to be prejudiced against collectors when I sell a guitar? That's an interesting question.
As a builder do I have any responsibility to help manage a scarce resource? Does that responsibility change when I build 100 guitars a year or when I build 100,000 or 10,000,000?
I'd love an answer to that."

My answer would be yes to all those questions. You have the right to sell or not sell your wares to whomever you wish, although the government may not agree with that statement. As an individual I believe there is a responsibility to manage and conserve the planets resources in a responsible manner. What constitutes "responsible manner" varies from individual to individual as Cecil the lion found out.