sources for sitka panels ? north hudson?

[Delwin D Fandrich]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Nossaman" <RNossaman@KSCABLE.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: January 16, 2001 6:16 AM
Subject: Re: sources for sitka panels ? north hudson?


> With decent wood being harder to get all the time, I don't see his getting
> any better. Given the size of the trees still available, wider planks with
> close quartered grain angles are mostly already gone. I'm told that 3-4"
> planks are a pretty ideal width anyway for stability. I haven't gotten too
> excited about ring angles down to 45°. At the risk of uttering heresy, I'm
> not all that convinced that absolutely vertical grain is all that critical
> in a rib crowned assembly, since the panel isn't under the compressive
> abuse of a compression crowned system.
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One very good reason to move away from compression-crowned soundboard
systems.

This has been my experience as well. There is a moderate variation in
stiffness between a soundboard panel using perfectly vertically grained wood
and one made up of boards having grain angles down in the 45º to 60º range.
But, considering that the board is also stiffened with the bridge running
more-or-less parallel to the grain line of the soundboard, I don't see this
as a big problem.

Spruce has very little stiffness across-grain anyway, so across the panel it
is not going to matter much either. We depend on the ribs to provide
stiffness there.

Del