_____ From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of erwinspiano at aol.com Sent: March 12, 2009 1:18 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] #2 Soundboard Wood I recently jointed 3 boards from a gorgeous pinkish colored cant. The rings were 20 to 30 grains an inch. The wood planes easily in either direction. Why? Dunno. My point is the wood is drop dead gorgeous & it was rescued from a pulpers mill! I'm sure it's beautiful wood. But it wouldn't go into one of my boards. Nor would it go into the ribs. It's too stiff and too heavy. I don't like the stuff. Except to look at, of course. Still as rebuilders of fine instruments we must offer what is traditionally excepted as top quality materials & this for me applies to the wood selection. The color & grain count both need to be reasonable. Asthetics are still important to fine works of art in any form. I doubt many will say , my, what a beautiful carbon fiber soundboard you have there. Or is it still a Steinway? Hmm. It's called education. We're supposed to be the experts. It's up to us to dispel the myths when they are detrimental to the health of the industry and/or the planet. You say, "top quality materials...." What does this mean? How is it defined? What are the criteria? Why have we allowed people who apparently don't really understand the workings of the instrument to define these things? Well... I've enjoyed the sound of the tighter grain boards I've personally installed more than most others. And when using this material it needs to be thinner & thinned in the right places. I once had a conversation with the Late but esteemed late Sheldon Smith in the Bay area & he said he always liked the sound of reddish woods better & searched them out. Other lumber guys have told me it's the iron content in the wood that creates the reddish color. I can't confirm this but the wood seems harder to blades & chisels. Higher impedance? Probably. Is that good or desirable. Depends on ones point of view and what's trying to be achieved. This is why we actually "design" ribs. Or, at least, we're supposed to. It's not trial and error nor is it mythology rules. Perhaps the carbon fiber board will put us all out of misererable discussion. It can be any thickness & hardness & we won't need to tune them as often. great! fewer tunings. Not for some. As for the mystery of wood, it is truly a mysterious wood. To say there is no such thing as magic wood is above my pay grade but I truly think the natural material known as wood is indeed magic & precious in so many ways. If you insist. To the wood technologist, however, who actually works at understanding the stuff, it's more like a fiber reinforced plastic. It's an engineering material. An imprecise one, to be sure, but still an engineering material. Could we ever think of a Stradivarius as mystical & magical if it had carbon fiber plates for sounding boards. Will a FIne piano new or rebuilt ever have the same charisma as the one made from a finely selected spruce/wooden soundboard? I doubt it or at least not in my lifetime. I know several violin makers who do not regard the Stradivarius as mystical and magical. It's a instrument whose musical characteristics have been surpassed by more than a few modern makers. I'm not sure wood conservation is that dismal in some places. It's kind of like global warming...it depend on who you ask. It seems that in Canada they are managing there forest in some ways & if they are not completely succeeding they are a country of people that are FAR more concerned about it & engaged than most Americans. Trixs cousins have been engaged there for 35 years doing replanting. I was asked to give a talk, several years back, about woods suitable for piano soundboards at a Tone Wood Conference in Wells, BC (it's way, way up north of Vancouver). During the course of the conference I was able to meet and talk with a number of small wood lot managers. Among other things I learned that the BC government, which owns most of the timber in BC, has decided that "sustainable yield forest management" really means forest management for "maximum fiber yield." This translates into a growth/cut cycle of about 45 years. These managers were lamenting the fact that slow-growth forests of any kind were disappearing. So, yes, the forests are being managed for long-term and sustainable yield as long as what you are after is wood fiber or pulp. We'll have a never ending supply of MDF for our soundboards. These things are going to make carbon fiber boards sound pretty good. In the Pacific NW Sitka spruce is now being plantation grown. The private timber land owners are really proud of this. We're going to have all the Sitka spruce we want as long as we will accept a grain width of 5 to 8 mm. But, if you are after a sustainable source for Sitka spruce suitable for what we have come to demand for piano soundboard production, good luck. It's not happening. Not in Western North America at any rate. ddf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090312/5b2422e8/attachment.html>
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