>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
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