----- Original Message ----- From: "Farrell" <mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com> To: <pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: March 13, 2001 5:15 PM Subject: Re: new > Hi Del. Why is maple the wood of choice for a bent rim. Why not something > harder like Lignum Vitae, or oak, or ironwood. Just curious why hard maple > seems to be tops. > -------------------------------------------------------- Oak -- both red and white -- has been successfully used, as has birch (which is commonly used in Europe), white ash, beech along with, I'm sure, several others. (Not forgetting, of course, the ubiquitous 'select hardwood.' It's largely a matter of reasonable strength and density, workability, bendability, availability and affordability.... Lignum vitae is way too expensive, difficult to work with, difficult to glue reliably, virtually impossible to turn into veneers without it cracking and breaking, etc. I don't know about 'ironwood.' There are several dozen different species of wood that have been locally dubbed ironwood; which one do you mean. I would guess most of them would fail on the workability, bendability, availability and affordability criteria. Del
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