To the left you can see the beginning of my little experiment. I had a narrow yet thick chunk of Cocobolo left from cutting the sides to Arielle’s psaltery, and I was trying to see if I couldn’t find a use for it somehow.

One thing that struck me was that it had the most beautiful sapwood, yet it was too narrow to make an entire back from it, so I decided to cut the board into four strips and bookmatch each pair of strips, to make a four-piece back. Since the sapwood (the lighter area of the wood), was so dramatic and figured, I decided to highlight that area and maximize its area on the back.

I really like how the whole back turned out once I cut out the shape of the psaltery. You can see this piece, along with a closeup shot of the sapwood area, in the Treasure Trove section of my main website.