It was a good dry day so I took the opportunity to do the bracing on this soundboard.. this is the one that I'm making from this redwood that I was talking about the other day.. the tree that was a sunken in a river in California for a hundred years..
Having got to know it a bit now, I've got to say, it's the most remarkable piece of wood I've ever worked on.
The first thing I noticed about it is how light it is. It's almost got no weight at all. At the same time, it's really stiff and strong. And at the same time, really flexible and springy. Of course, it also has an amazing tap-tone, as you'd expect from a piece of wood with those physical characteristics.
It's when I started working on the wood that I noticed the most amazing thing about it. Some types of wood can be very difficult to work with. The grain can change direction and tear out, even with the sharpest plane. Spruce and cedar soundboards are delicate and can easily split at the slightest mistake. But this wood is almost supernatural in how easy it is to work..
I think what it is (and this is just my hunch.. I'm not a real scientist) is that all of the sap in the wood has turned into crystal, because of the slow, airless conditions in which it seasoned.
It's so impossibly dry that the blade cuts through the fibres effortlessly as if they were bone dry stalks of wheat.. almost as if were made of fine dust.. with no tearout at all, whichever direction you plane it. At the same time, it's not flaky at all. It's really strongly held together. The surface remains smooth, shiny and hard and it's almost as if the medullary rays* in the dark wood give off their own light..
Well, I wish I could describe it better. It is a very remarkable piece of wood. I've never known anything like it. I'm really looking forward to hearing how it will sound...
- Medullary rays are the lines which go horizontally between the vertical, annual grain lines. They are cellulose structures which hold everything together, though I think in this piece of wood they have turned into some kind of magical crystal.