<HTML>In a message dated 10/11/2002 8:52:21 PM Pacific Daylight Time, sbirkett@real.uwaterloo.ca writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Subj:Re: Bridge cap materials Date:10/11/2002 8:52:21 PM Pacific Daylight Time From:<A HREF="mailto:sbirkett@real.uwaterloo.ca">sbirkett@real.uwaterloo.ca</A> Reply-to:<A HREF="mailto:pianotech@ptg.org">pianotech@ptg.org</A> To:<A HREF="mailto:pianotech@ptg.org">pianotech@ptg.org</A> Sent from the Internet     Stephen</BLOCKQUOTE>          Well out here on the west coast I guess it is > we don't have any. Dooms day stuff . Not at all. You must have a better supplier than Bolduc. His supplies are  predominatly wide grain. I can drive to S.F. and select it from  Macbeaths Lumber stores there but in the rough sawn condition it's hard to select grain orientation. Your in a better location for lumber than I.  How and where do you buy your stock (names & addresses) and is it cut it some spec.etc.? The cost isn't that big a consideration since I probably do less than dozen sets of bridge caps a year. I'd gladly pay several hundred dollars for a good years worth.     Thanks for the info.             Dale Erwin <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> 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 </BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>