Soundboard crown

[Ron Nossaman]

>Tonewood Ron, tonewood.

Yes, of course. Sometimes the more sophisticated terminology escapes me 
momentarily. Thank you.


>You know, I took a couple classes in dendrology - but I've never seen a 
>tonewood tree - not even a picture of one.
>
>Terry Farrell

They look just like regular trees, as near as I can tell from the 
brochures, only they grow on the North side of the mountain, somewhere down 
in the valley at the East end where they only get direct sun when it rises 
in the Southwest. Even then, I think you have to whack them with a 
previously tuned testing log to see if they're ripe, cut them down, float 
them in a pond filled with secret sauce for 340 years to season those 
little vibrating membranes, hand split them into quarters with a giant 
froe, air dry them for 9.2 years in the North facing shed while turning 
them every hour. Then you cut a piece to a precisely specific length, shout 
into one end of it, and listen for the bell like tone coming out the other 
end. If the tone produced doesn't sound like the calibration sample in the 
vault, or if the shout doesn't pass through the log at the right speed, or 
emerge at the right pitch, it's not a tone log and you have to go back out 
in the woods and start over. Those that prove not to be tone logs are used 
for keybeds, keys, posts and beams, studs, plates, and joists for Western 
framing, light but sturdy soundboard presses, tongue depressors, and yard 
sticks - not necessarily in that order.

Ron N