Oud Photos

[yumchen78]

very ancient water agarwood

 

[yumchen78]

Imprint of ancient times

 

[language scent]

Brother kani inspecting mesOUD stash
View attachment 42483
View attachment 42484

Brother kani needs to quit eating that good baklava and Fistikella butter and instead send a couple boxes and jars my way

 

[Saudalhajri]

New boxes for oud.
One small Japanese Meiji period ivory ladies powder box. One large Indian ivory box.
The Japanese one is almost airtight, the other isn’t. The Indian one is much heavier and thicker. Both acquired legally.

 

[Olfactory Nomad]

Wild Nha Trang pieces from Grandawood. Some of these are pretty heavy. The biggest piece is 10 grams on it's own.

 

[Mr.P]

View attachment 42895

New boxes for oud.
One small Japanese Meiji period ivory ladies powder box. One large Indian ivory box.
The Japanese one is almost airtight, the other isn’t. The Indian one is much heavier and thicker. Both acquired legally.

Look at all that oud! What kind is in the box there??

Wild Nha Trang pieces from Grandawood. Some of these are pretty heavy. The biggest piece is 10 grams on it's own. View attachment 42905View attachment 42906View attachment 42907

very curious to hear your impressions!

 

[Saudalhajri]

Look at all that oud! What kind is in the box there??

very curious to hear your impressions!

in the small box is wild Filipino (mistook it for malaysian before), the big box contains Garo Hills char oud.

 

[Saudalhajri]

Sinking/underwater piece of Manipur Hindi oud. This was taken out of my Manipur Zora/Jura oud bag that I bought as “Triple super” or “AAA”, not underwater. I felt its weight in my hand and the sound it made on the table and knew it was very dense.
Threw it in a cup of water and it partially sank, a bulbous tip was peaking above the water surface so I broke it off (around 5mm or less) because it wasn’t dense enough, the rest sank right to the bottom.

On coals it blows up to an oily resinous glob as expected, and an amazing labdanum vanilla sweetness goes to your nose along with a heavy dose of saffron and wet earthiness, it has some spice to it but it’s not harsh at all, even in a red hot coal, and even after I flip the piece on the coal.

Finding sinking pieces is my favorite thing, it’s been happening more frequently thank god.

 

[Saudalhajri]

Starting to build a collection of sinking chips, I struck gold when I bought this Indian oud. Very well cleaned, high quality and plenty of sinkers.

Anyone have experience with drying oud? My current method is drying it carefully with a paper towel, then laying it in the room for a day on top of a paper towel, then putting it in a bag with silica gel bags, changing the silica gels every day or two. Is drying even needed? I’m not selling so I don’t care about dry vs wet weight, I’m just worried it’ll degrade or rot or something.

 

[yumchen78]

Beautiful traces of time

 

[Saudalhajri]

Cleaning and grading a new batch of Garo Hills char, a little lower quality but I found some sinkers.

 

[Saudalhajri]

If there was Hindi Kinam this would be it
Just finished cleaning it and it’s Weighing 0.92g and completely sinking (it was already sinking before I cleaned it).
it’s completely solid like a brick, and even in the hand it feels heavy and dense. I only tried the cleaning powder on the burner so this might be inaccurate, is smells like sweet baked vanilla cake, a little herby with cinnamon and clove like spiciness, not harsh at all, and even from the powder there was overwhelming oil and resin bubbles.
Has anyone seen an Indian oud like this? This came from a bag of random grade Char oud from Garo hills.

 

[-Renton-]

If there was Hindi Kinam this would be it
Just finished cleaning it and it’s Weighing 0.92g and completely sinking (it was already sinking before I cleaned it).
it’s completely solid like a brick, and even in the hand it feels heavy and dense. I only tried the cleaning powder on the burner so this might be inaccurate, is smells like sweet baked vanilla cake, a little herby with cinnamon and clove like spiciness, not harsh at all, and even from the powder there was overwhelming oil and resin bubbles.
Has anyone seen an Indian oud like this? This came from a bag of random grade Char oud from Garo hills.
View attachment 43154
View attachment 43155View attachment 43152

Very oily too!!!

 

[yumchen78]

Beautiful traces of time

 

[Saudalhajri]

Trying out a new mortar and pestle

Turned this ^ dust from Indian oud cleaning

Into this fine powder, it was then sifted and mixed with Indian frankincense tincture, Indian sandalwood, ruh gulab, sambac absolut, and two drops of choya nakh (burnt seashell essential oil) and mixed into an incense. Turned out better than expected for an improvised incense so I’m happy I wrote down the recipe.

 

[Saudalhajri]

New experiment. I’ve read some accounts of oud hunters burying their chips in the dirt or even in swamps to clean them and make them better. So I took some big double super chips from assam that I won’t use that much, and buried them in a mixture of potting soil, a little sand, and a few pinches of organic compost, then added water just to wet the mixture. I’ll check them in 6 months. The container is sealed and in a dark, room temperature place. I’ve read that warmer climate is better but we’ll see.

 

[Mr.P]

Interesting! Looks like that mortar and pestle did a fine job. One expert on incense making told me a good quality Turkish coffee grinder with a hardened steel burr is one way to get very fine powders consistently.

The soil experiment is an interesting one... brings lots of questions to mind for sure.

 

[language scent]

Elegant yamadamatsu Kyara “endless existence” Unique florals, sweet, bitter, very green kyara backbone perfection! Extremely potent .01 fumigated my kitchen. There is a kind of lemony note that I have only ever seen in this kyara that is so amazing in conjunction to all the other notes! 10/10 kyara!

 

[Mr.P]

Elegant yamadamatsu Kyara “eternal existence” Unique florals, sweet, bitter, very green kyara backbone perfection! Extremely potent .01 fumigated my kitchen. There is a kind of lemony note that I have only ever seen in this kyara that is so amazing in conjunction to all the other notes! 10/10 kyara!

Juicy looking wood!

 

[Saudalhajri]

Interesting! Looks like that mortar and pestle did a fine job. One expert on incense making told me a good quality Turkish coffee grinder with a hardened steel burr is one way to get very fine powders consistently.

The soil experiment is an interesting one... brings lots of questions to mind for sure.

The mortar and pestle did better than expected. It was an expensive one but the arm had a numb in the end , remnants from the lathe I assume that weren’t cleaned off. I hope with more use it’ll round off.

I’ll look into the coffee grinder for sure, might be good for big batches, they tend to retain material when used. So not good for 2-3 gram batches.