Wonderwand

[John Musselwhite]

At 05:43 PM 2/20/99 -0700, Vince wrote:

>This stuff gives new meaning to "hard" hardwood.  I got a piece of this 
>ironwood a while back.  I understand that it is used in bridge/road
building.  I 
>don't know that it would look good as a tuning lever handle, so it might
not be 
>worth trashing your tools over.

One thing to keep in mind is that dense hardwoods are heavy! I have a copy
of a Hale in African Blackwood that Mike Swendsen made me that is
beautiful, but on uprights it's a chore to use because of its weight, which
was at least half again what the original rosewood weighed. He ultimately
cut over an inch off the end and turned it down just to get rid of some of
the mass but it's still a bit on the heavy side. It works extremely well
for grands, and even though the internal parts are from a Schaff hex-rod
extension lever it has a solid feel. 

For uprights I prefer a wonderwand-style-lever also by Mike with a bacote
knob on the end that looks like a large drawer-pull rather than being a
ball. I find this style of lever is much lighter, has better balance and is
easier to manipulate in a vertical position than wood or nylon-handled
levers. 

>>The wood you are describing is closely akin to a specie called lignum 
>>vitae which is extremely dense having a specific gravity of 1.23. The 
>>chunk you have is worth a bit of money on today's market. 

As an aside, we use lignum vitae as the bushings for the clappers of large
swinging bells. In addition to being dense, it's an oily wood and doesn't
require much lubrication for that purpose.  Working with it is *extremely*
hard on tools.

		John


John Musselwhite, RPT -  Calgary, Alberta Canada
Registered Piano Technician   http://www.musselwhite.com
email: john@musselwhite.com