Bridge cap materials

[Stephen Birkett]

Dale writes:
>With really good supply's of maple almost extinct

Come now, Dale. This sounds like doomsday stuff to me. I agree the supply 
is low at the moment, hence the exhorbitant prices, but this sort of 
ecological and economic swinging has been going on in the forest product 
department for centuries. It's no big deal. A bridge cap hardly uses a lot 
of maple. I haven't noticed it being difficult to get good quality rock 
maple from my supplier - I can get as much as I want whenever I want (as 
long as I don't mind paying for it).

>I find it more and more difficult to be happy about the wide grain and 
>fairly soft stuff I get from my supplier.

Now it sounds like your supplier is trying to flog you soft maple 
(different species) because it's still cheap. Are you asking for rock maple?

>I'd like to see close grain and a strong medullary ray that comes from 
>true 1/4 sawn stock but this a rare occurance.

Now this is a marketting issue. In North America it is traditionally, and 
increasingly, difficult to get quarter sawn maple because almost all the 
stuff is cut flat sawn for grain figure. There's nothing really new about 
that,  although I expect the very high current bf price is influencing 
lumber companies further in the flatsawn direction for high price cabinet 
work etc. The poor piano bridge maker is left out in the cold.

If you want quarter sawn maple why not re-saw it yourself from the thickest 
piece of flatsawn maple you can find. You can get an ample supply for 
bridge caps that way. I made a 2 1/2" thick solid quarter-sawn wrestplank 
in hard maple that way, by vertically laminating three pieces cut from a 4" 
flatsawn stock. No big deal.

Another approach. Try European beech. It's 50% of the cost of domestic hard 
maple here in Canada, despite the shipping and importation costs. And 
fabulous to work with. Just bought 150 board feet to make a work bench. 
Better than hard maple. I expect it would be good for bridge caps. Is it 
used in Europe?

Stephen


Stephen Birkett Fortepianos
Authentic Reproductions of 18th and 19th Century Pianos
464 Winchester Drive
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2T 1K5
tel: 519-885-2228
mailto: sbirkett@real.uwaterloo.ca
http://real.uwaterloo.ca/~sbirkett