#1376 – The Expat Files: Wood, Bureaucracy, and the Ivory Ban

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now as I wonder Hello there all you ex-pad wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here. So let's get started You longtime listeners might remember when I was talking about rainforest hardwood here in Latin America It's all over the place if you choose to use it You're nuts and really missing out if you don't of course some people with no class no designed and maybe even no money

[00:46] And no worries about things not lasting very long may like to shop at IKEA go ahead But hey you really are missing out you might remember I said if you're gonna build a house an apartment a condo whatever or even furniture You'd be absolutely nuts outfitting your house out of plain old pine or IKEA I don't know how many you listeners out there have built little projects out of wood up where you live in the states You know gift boxes desks bed frames cabinets chairs patio furniture I know lots of you have tried your hand at it a lot of you have told me so I've done all that I've gone through that stage. I Used to get those do-it-yourself woodworking books at the checkout counter at Piggly Wiggly way back when I was living in the states built lots of end tables and patio furniture and stuff almost always way back when out of pine because it was cheap and

[01:35] Available I couldn't afford the next step up which was always old critique or birch or even Extremely expensive stuff like cherry sure they had all the high price stuff to at the lumber yard I used to drool over it couldn't afford it. Instead. I was stuck with pine I even made bed frames out of pine It served its purpose Didn't finish up very well at all or stain very well always looked a little cheap, but up north it lasted forever Same thing down here pine is readily available But it does not last the bugs love it up in the states pine gets attacked too But only if it's outside in the house almost never believe me down here You don't want to build with it not even for indoor use because the bugs will find and attack it there, too Eventually, but lots of people do people who don't have money they build with that stuff problem is lots of furniture even expensive furniture

[02:27] The upholstery is built around pine framing though You can't see it the cheaper the furniture the more likely that so you long-time listeners may remember me telling the story of how Workers ants got to my living room furniture my good leather real leather furniture from Italy Luckily, I caught it in time I was sitting down in my living room one morning and I saw just one big fat worker ant Walking along the baseboard and there's never just one ant So I got down on my knees watch where he went and he made his way up one of the back legs of the sofa So I lifted up the sofa a bit pulled back the fabric that was stapled to the bottom You know there's a piece of fabric on the bottom of every sofa and chair I think they call it a dust protector and I saw a palm-sized conglomeration of little white balls. They look like couscous balls. I

[03:18] Instantly got the wheelies and practically dropped the couch on my foot. Those were the dreaded worker ant eggs Anyway, I discovered that in time to save the couch Same thing happened another time when I saw a worker ant in my closet. That's a lockup from my musical equipment I thought oh no my nice expensive classic guitars are in there So I pulled out my three guitar cases open them up and breathe the sire relief Everything was okay, but really in my mind. It wasn't okay. There was an ant there There's got to be more now You know expensive guitars are not made out of pine so worker ants even the big-ass Latin American ones It'll eat almost any kind of wood Soft wood that is will not touch a guitar because for one it's got varnish on it and two They're made out of very dense hardwoods and as you might know most hardwoods are resistant to any kind of vermin attack

[04:11] They've got a built-in sort of organic pesticide in their sap That's why even here in Latin America where it's moist and humid and there are lots and lots of weird little critters You could use those dense rainforest hardwoods anywhere you want and they're not going to get attacked Lots of houses down here upscale houses mostly have teak mahogany Gobba, which is really dense tropical oak and many others including a beautiful blonde kind of wood called Paulo Blanco All those aforementioned woods are very hard and dense give a beautiful finish and bugs just won't attack them However, if you work with them if you build with them You'll find out you go through lots of saw blades way too many saw blades and when screwing and fastening the stuff together You burn through a lot of drill bits, too

[04:58] Which is how I learned how to sharpen my own carbide blades at home re-sharpen my old drill bits, too Otherwise I would have spent in a godly amount of time and money going back and forth to the hardware store now Of course if you go to lumberyard down here in Latin America, you could buy pine That's pre-treated with who knows what kind of toxic chemical, you know So the bugs and the mildew don't attack it but man, I'll tell you just like the pre-treated stuff up in the states It's not good for man nor beast just loaded with toxins. So when you cut through that stuff It's all in the air and you're breathing it to by the way Here's a tip and you really should take this to heart. I've got a lot of experience. So take it from me You don't want to build anything out of wood. That's gonna be exposed outside to Sun rain or a hundred percent humidity Because down here in Latin America, nothing that's organic like wood can stand up to this climate not for long anyway

[05:50] Now, of course, you will see some beautiful rainforest hardwood doors in rustic and colonial buildings even in nice new upscale buildings And of course an entrance door will be exposed to all kinds of weather rain, Sun, etc Take it from me though The only ones that'll stand the test of time our doors that have a little cupola or roof or archway or lean to Protecting them from direct sunlight and rain. Believe me just a little sunlight hitting a door Let's say for an hour a day in time will take its toll now as mentioned if you build an outdoor structure out of pine It's gonna rot and degrade in a hurry Even if you put five coats at the best kind of paint or waterproofing on it own paint here in Latin America That's a topic for a whole show. We'll get to it I repeat and let this sink in if you have an outdoor structure and you decide to make the door out of nice thick

[06:41] rainforest hardwood Like you see in some of the old colonial churches if it's exposed to direct sunlight or occasional rains It certainly will last some years a lot more than pine But we'll start warping cracking and look pretty shoddy in a few short years It won't rot but it will start looking like crap But again if you protect it under an arch or a tiny pitched roof like those old colonial churches always seem to do as long As it doesn't get sunlight every day It'll last a hundred years and look good the whole time and again I suggest if you're buying or building use some of those really dense rainforest hardwoods for furniture ceiling beams Floors even doors by the way one of the dumbest moves I see down here I see it all the time a person will buy a nice upscale house

[07:28] Maybe even use a plan from a first-world architect and they'll put those cheap white steel doors in the house Between every room, you know what I'm talking about those cheap sort of all-weather doors with fake laminations in them That look like wood panels But they're really thin sheets of steel that have been pressed at the factory to look like they've got wood grain Man to have fake doors like that in the land of rainforest hardwood. That's tacky What people don't know is for about the same price down here. Anyway, you could get solid hardwood doors That would cost you five or ten times as much up in the States if you could get them at all By the way in the rest of the world the first world anyway, you mostly can't get them anymore And that's the other part of this story Turns out there are all kinds of international treaties in place now

[08:15] Where certain woods that US agencies say are endangered or our exotic species Wood that you could get in practically any big lumberyard down here can no longer be legally shipped to the United States and other first-world countries Some of you might remember around 2005. There's a big hassle with Gibson and Fender guitar companies sourcing exotic woods out of Central and South America Gibson and Fender are probably the two biggest high-end guitar sellers in the world Turns out in one such scandal, they'd been nursing along a big crop of Honduran mahogany for the guitars Those trees once planted take about 15 to 20 years before you can harvest them You see high-end very expensive guitars have that heavy dense wood in them mahogany rainforest mahogany a different kind than up in the

[09:02] States is a big component guitars with those kinds of woods are not cheap. Believe me They're not for beginners For example a new Fender Stratocaster made in USA starts at around 1,500 bucks when they say made in USA Those are the expensive ones. They use those imported exotic hardwoods for the other Fenders made in Mexico and Indonesia, etc They use a lighter cheaper wood So the sound is different all three Stratocasters look exactly the same But the American made one is much heavier by weight by sound too And as for another famous guitar that Gibson Les Paul also very heavy again because of the exotic hardwoods a new Les Paul Starts at around 2 grand now the older ones used very heavy and dense Honduran mahogany Denser wood because it's old-growth hardwood from a virgin forest. They always used rainforest mahogany for the body of that guitar

[09:54] That gives it a kind of sound or timber the newer models just don't have they use rainforest mahogany too But it's not old growth. There's not much of that left anymore I can tell you from experience because I have a vintage Les Paul from the late 60s and a 1970 Fender jazz bass Both of those over 50 years old and they weigh a lot more than a new one of the same make and model Why do you think so many famous and high-end musicians when they finally hit the big time? They're willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to buy an old vintage guitar like the ones I have Why do you think there's such a big market for old classic vintage guitars? They look exactly the same as a brand new one. You could buy out of a catalog today Well professional musicians know they sound and they play very differently

[10:41] Problem is the first world has passed laws against importing those kinds of woods because they're considered exotic and endangered But are they really in some places for sure those supply demand in a super high price Well always find a balance and equilibrium By the way, those old Les Pauls are so heavy a lot of classic rockers like Mark Farner You know the lead player from Grand Funk and John Fogarty from Credence A lot of them have switched out their older heavy Les Pauls for newer models or newer guitars that are much lighter Because they have a carpal tunnel nerve damage and shoulder problems kind of sad, huh? Now a long time ago, I told you a story of my friend who happened to be a lawyer in Costa Rica He came from a quite well-to-do family that had a big teak farm In fact, he took me out there a couple of times and he showed me the different regions where the trees were quite tall and ready

[11:32] To harvest and regions where the trees were only maybe foot and a half tall saplings that had 15 years ago He told me two things never invest in the tree farm. You see at the time in Costa Rica Every time you picked up on newspaper or walked into a lawyer's office There'd be an advertisement or a pamphlet about how to invest in teak farms How gringos and expats could invest in teak farms You just put in your money increments of five or ten grand and you're buying shares And you get a 12% return and you're guaranteed a huge payout in 10 or 15 years when the farm is ready to harvest Well, my lawyer friend whose parents happen to own a teak farm told me you should never invest in a scheme like that He told me that no one he's ever known has ever made a dime in investing that way

[12:18] That's just a scammers way to get your money and eventually they'll just disappear He said maybe four three four or five years. You'll get a return. You'll get your phone calls answered You might even get a tour of the farm sooner or later He said they just disappear or the company changes hands. They sell it to somebody else and you lose your deal You won't even know it till the day they quit answering the phone He also told me that teak farming and hardwood farming is a very easy and profitable business That takes very little manpower and maintenance for about the first 15 years Then at about the 15-year point you have to hire armed guards to patrol your forest 24-7 Because scavengers will come in at night and chop down trees. Why? Because he said once a crop of saplings reaches 15 years old

[13:06] Just one of those logs is worth five thousand bucks and usually he said when logs get stolen It's been coordinated by your own guards He said for the guards the risk is worth it because guard only makes about five thousand dollars in an entire year That's his swallow his salary minimum wage in Costa Rica about 400 bucks. That's about five grand a year So with one night's stealthy work with the help of a friend or two a guy could make a year's salary And that's why he said if you're out in the boonies at night You see a truck hauling logs for sure those logs have been stolen this clandestine thievery Because he said there are laws in Costa Rica that say if you're hauling logs You have to do it during the day when the sun's up and every trunk has to be tagged and stamped Now that doesn't go for pine because pine as mentioned is a cheap everyday wood

[13:54] Used a lot down here for disposable projects and for construction by poor folks and used all over the place To construct forms for pouring concrete so yes They use a lot of pine down here grows super fast to like up in the states like a weed But it's not worth much to bad guys and no goodniks. They'd rather go off to the hardwood That's where the real money is the real dough by the way as mentioned a long time ago as well Pine down here is not like pine up in the states It's pretty dense about twice as dense twice as heavy is the same piece of pine You'd get up at the lumberyard in the states by the way Gringo's tell me pine is getting more and more like balsa wood up In the states, it's just getting thinner and lighter down here though pine Will fool you when I first went down to the lumberyard and I put my hands on that stuff

[14:40] I thought wow this would be good to build stuff. It's heavy dense Finishes up pretty nice better than pine up in the states anyway But man, I'll tell you insects and moss and fungus just love that stuff So do not be fooled into believing that stuff's good for do-it-yourself projects. It ain't oh and one more thing You have to know about the wood down here whether it's pine or rainforest hardwood of any kind unlike up in the states They do not kill dry anything So look out if you think you bought some nice straight boards at the lumber yard And you're all happy and pleased because they're stacked up so nice and square in your garage Don't be surprised when you come back to them a couple weeks later to do your project They're all cock-eyed warped and gnarly but not to worry Just stack them in your garage or your carport out of the rain and Sun don't ever stack them directly on a cement floor

[15:32] Put little wood spacers or slats between them stack your wood pile even and high and put some cement blocks on top evenly spaced As well and within probably a month or so they'll dry nice and flat and straight and true Like I said, the wood is not ever dried in a kill So it's got a high moisture content you got to have some airflow around it So it'll dry out that means you have to wait at least a month before you start working with it Here's another tip that served me quite well If you're really serious and meticulous about your do-it-yourself projects made out of wood that is you could buy a wood moisture meter from Amazon for 20 bucks Now being that I'm not always as smart as I sound and I'm definitely not as dumb as I look as A do-it-yourselfer and maker of many wood projects. I learned the importance of moisture content in wood the hard way now

[16:23] It's okay to have a moisture content level about 19 or 20 percent if you're gonna use your wood For let's say a stick-built house, you know two by fours and layers of plywood sub floors roofs attics stuff Like that, you know your basic u.s. Style stick-built construction techniques moisture level of 19 or 20 percent's Okay, no more that's for the two by fours you buy at the local lumberyard But if you're buying wood that's intended for use indoors You know wood that's intended for nice woodworking projects like shelves or tables or cabinets That is nicely finished shelves that you're gonna varnish and stain or paint that goes for wooden doors and jams and cabinets Etc. Pretty much any basic woodworking around a house when you're gonna make a nice little project

[17:13] I mean look sometimes when you're doing woodworking you spend hours just sanding the thing and you want the finished project to be quite nice For finer projects not rough and crude projects the moisture content of the wood should be at nine percent or less Now down here in Latin America where things could be pretty humid, especially during the rainy season How are you gonna know what your moisture content really is unless you have one of those meters? Though if you've had wood that's been sitting around six months or a year or more, you know, it's below nine percent That is if it's never been in the rain Anyway, like I said, I learned the hard way your wood better be dry if you're doing a miter cut Let's say you're making picture frames out of wood you fasten the corners in a jig use finishing nails and glue Yeah, come back the next day. Take off the jig. Everything's fine

[17:59] Perfectly mitered corners. Well, that'll work fine for a while anyway But if the moisture contents above nine percent soon enough gaps will open in those mitered corners. It screams amateur man I can't tell you how many bad I mean really bad woodworking projects. I've seen here in Latin American homes Not mine. Well at first mine, but not anymore. I'm talking about other people's attempts at woodworking projects Oh, and I forgot to mention back to the Gibson guitar thing The Gibson company has been raided by US federal agents many times They've been fined for unauthorized use of exotic woods to the tune of 300 grand in the feds latest raid They took computers and files and wood samples from the main factory in Nashville They caught Gibson shipping illegal rosewood from Madagascar via Germany

[18:47] Turns out rosewood is more than double the cost of rainforest mahogany now and a crucial component in many guitars Valued today at about five thousand bucks a cubic yard nowadays There's a whole list of hardwoods that cannot enter the United States There is even a wood restrictive act that passed Congress the Lacey act barring firms from bringing exotic woods into the US By the way, I know a couple of luthiers here in Latin America, you know custom guitar makers They make them by hand Turns out one of these guys told me that his guitars were quite popular With famous and almost famous guitar players up in the states He said his guitars became somewhat popular online back in around 2010 So he was contacted by some big music dealers up in the states

[19:34] They wanted to sell his guitars in the end He said all of the deals fell through because he couldn't get his guitars past customs and immigration Due to the exotic wood content He said he couldn't or wouldn't change that because the type of wood made all the difference in the world to the look of his Guitars and the tonal quality you should see his website and video. They really are works of art so he said since he makes and sells guitars for a living he had to find a hack and Now he says people will order his guitars online Give them a deposit though not in bulk just one at a time The hitches someone has to fly down and pick up the guitar personally and fly it back in hand In other words has an item of personal property not an item Specifically meant for sale. That's the loophole. Someone has to fly down and pick it up himself

[20:23] They can't just be boxed up and shit. They have to be accompanied by a human man How crazy is that turns out the US has a huge bureaucracy that grew up around sustainable hardwood The kind of wood you're allowed to have and not allowed to have as you might have figured the government has turned it into a hugely Complicated issue though. It does sound like a truly noble effort all government projects start out that way Then the bureaucracy grows like cancer and all those negative secondary intersiary effects pop up You know exotic woods are not the only musical instrument components the USS band one thing though that amazes me They have not banned spitting that is blowing out your spit through a spit hole in Wood wind and brass instruments talk about spreading disease. Maybe falsio come up with a vaccine for it

[21:11] You know, I started playing the cello I think when I was eight or nine years old played in one of the Chicago City orchestras till I was around 16 years old Till it was just not cool to carry your cello on the bus anymore kids would bully the hell out of you Anyway for years I was right next to folks with their oboes and clarinets and bassoons Trumpets trombones and tubas forever blowing out globs of saliva through their spit valves and no one I mean no one batted an eye. I wonder what they did about that during kovat. The show must go on, right? And of course the band plays on oh And by the way, I played French horn in a marching band for a couple of years So I'm intimately aware of the location and use of the spit valve By the way, you should know even with the best of intentions when it's time to use that valve

[21:59] It doesn't always land on the floor parents think about that when your daughter's in the bedroom practicing the French horn Let's just say a violins a lot easier on the carpet By the way in front of the mix public we call it a water valve But when you're around musicians, it's just a dirty old spit valve very unromantic In fact disgusting and probably why the guitar players not the trombone or bassoon player who gets all the girls on a related subject I have a friend who is a concert pianist for a living You know, that's a tough job making enough to survive on it with a wife and kids But he does even managed to survive through Covid even though he admits He had to lower his standards a lot by taking a few cruise ship jobs. Hey, you gotta eat anyway He's a hell of a nice guy, but you know being in the entertainment biz

[22:44] He's a super liberal though something happened just recently that made him change his tune Listen to this email he says and I'll paraphrase this to cut out the boring parts. He says dear Johnny I'm so excited to be playing at the Sydney Opera House in Australia You know that spectacular building on the water with the tremendous arches you see in almost all the movies that depict Australia He says hope to see you there Yeah, I don't think so He says and now Johnny my tale of woe as you know We moved to New York a few weeks ago Perhaps you've seen the video footage of my Steinway piano coming out of our windows in Brussels in preparation for its transatlantic trip here Well, he says you won't believe this But the Steinway is now being held captive in a bonded warehouse in New Jersey because the piano has ivory keys

[23:32] You may say okay, of course, I know ivory is illegal But that's how they traditionally made pianos for hundreds and hundreds of years mine was made before the ivory ban But no matter my old classic Steinway must be a menace to all elephants near and far alive and dead According to the US government that is he says if you're a believer in the ivory band and you should be You'd be rightly concerned. However, I purchased well I should say my parents purchased my piano from the official Steinway dealer in Italy in 1987 and the worldwide ban on ivory went into effect two years later in 1989 and the piano was fabricated in 1985 four years before the ban However, there is some clever man from the US Fish and Wildlife Department at the warehouse

[24:23] Guarding my piano with his life. It can't be touched. It can't be moved. It can't be played It's an endangered species limbo and as a good government slug He's made it his mission not to let this piano into the country unless the ivory is removed from the keyboard Down to the bare wood and who knows if that bare wood will pass muster could be an exotic Endangered wood species too and Johnny who would play a piano with wooden keys What am I supposed to have the keyboard replaced with plastic keys? That's what they're all made of these days You know, anyway, he says our valiant defender of all things ivory says the ban actually went into effect in 1975 And thus this piano is not eligible for import However, Steinway says they made pianos with ivory keys in both New York and Hamburg until the worldwide ban was announced in 1989

[25:11] You know what? They say give a guy a uniform and suddenly he's got power power to abuse Especially if he's mediocre nothing with no power at home He says the sad fact is that I'm a professional pianist moving from my home in Europe to the United States With all of my belongings including my dear Steinway piano, which is the instrument I learned to play on that piano has always been there for me that Piano connected me to a million memories of family concerts and compositions and now they basically want to vandalize it or ask me to I'm thinking to write an op-ed in the Times or a short note for the New Yorker. Is there no sense left in the world? He says I've been overworking my brain on this absurd problem for some time and as you can imagine I'll do anything to avoid them destroying my piano. But now in desperation

[25:57] I need someone with a creative solution. So any hacks or ideas Johnny? Hmm. Well, that's pretty sad. I don't know you get who you vote for you vote for bureaucracy You get more and more of it. It slows and stagnates commerce and eventually we all get caught up in it By the way, a Steinway is considered the best concert grand piano in the world and a new one starts at anywhere from 40,000 to 175,000 bucks depending on the size you get all of them since 1989 with plastic keys Sure, it's a very dense hard kind of plastic. Not the cheap junk you find in those Casio keyboards But plastic nevertheless and you've heard all the doom and gloom this year about plastic and everything plastic in your water plastic in your air In your furniture in the food chain

[26:44] So if you're a keyboard or piano player, how are you supposed to protect yourself? When you're constantly plunking on those plastic keys and breathing in the microscopic nano plastic particle dust emanating out of it Just saying wait a minute. Wait a minute. I have a Korg digital piano with plastic keys Hmm. Guess I'll be spending more practice time on my guitar. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. My guitar picks are plastic What to do what to do all that and I'm stuck here in Latin America and there's no one to sue There isn't a lawyer down here who would take the case. They'd laugh at me Hmm. Here's one for the books I guess that would be reason number one to get the hell out of Latin America and move back to the States That's it. Then I could join the great American tradition of suing people

[27:33] You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America If you need some help with your own plan B We can schedule a one-on-one phone or Skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at gmail.com And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week-long expat insider seminar in Central America Where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan B Send me an email the expat files at gmail.com. No spamos