Resonance-wood: Difference between revisions

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===Resonance-wood===
'''Resonance wood''' or '''tone wood''' refers to the top of for instance violins. It is almost always [[Picea abies]] (in rare cases other species as for instance [[Abies alba]] may have been used). As the ring pattern often is visible at the instruments, it is possible to measure the ring widths directly at the instrument or via high resolution photos. Large amounts of tone wood has been traded from several source areas in Europe - in the alps and other forest areas in central Europe. Famous violin areas like [[Mittenwald]] and [[Markneukirchen]] may mainly have used rather local wood (and exported not only violins but also wood), but there will surely be exceptions. The altitude of those areas located in Germany and around may be at about 1000-1500 m.
In January 2009 I had a discussing with Olivier Bouriaud about crossdating of a violin-type instrument:
Olivier wrote:


"There are very few coniferous forests in Hungaria and the ring series are more likely to come from Romanian Carpathians (there are quite many known resonance-wood spruce sites), or maybe from Slovenia. It is common that Hungarian factories import wood from Romania. This is why I am looking at the Romanian sites, they are just much more likely. But there were also famous resonance-wood sites in Italy.."
Good tone wood should, beside good acoustic characteristics, also have a steady increment growth with as little variations as possibly and with straight fibers so not the wedges will look like propellers... The average ring width use to be 1-2 mm.  


So question from me: what is resonance-wood? - A concept I've never heard of. Got this interesting answer:
The most common way to build a violin top is to cut the same piece of wood into two halves and glue them together so that the youngest ring will be found in the middle. It also happens that wood from different trees are used and that pieces of wood are glued in other ways. In the normal case, with "butterflied" halves glued together - the measurements of the both sides of the instrument will show very high correlation values.


As you can guess, resonance wood is whenever a set of sometimes contradicting characteristics are present in the wood.
===See also===
More than one condition is needed to qualify as resonance wood - from what I know:
*[[List of references useful for violins]]
* large ring width (say around 5 mm),
* shallow cell walls (reduced density), and a
* radial growth with as little variations as possible. Things like this.


That should lead to a wood with a large ultrasonic velocity in fiber direction. Trees growing in high elevation are more prone to containing that so-called resonance wood. The regularity in rainfall amount during summer is a key and places Romanian Carpathian in a good position.
<br/>[[User:Lars-Ake|Lars-Ake]] 20:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC) (Copied from our forum. Original date 5 Jan 2009)
[[Category:Wood Anatomy]]
[[Category:Wood Anatomy]]

Revision as of 12:04, 21 November 2010

Resonance wood or tone wood refers to the top of for instance violins. It is almost always Picea abies (in rare cases other species as for instance Abies alba may have been used). As the ring pattern often is visible at the instruments, it is possible to measure the ring widths directly at the instrument or via high resolution photos. Large amounts of tone wood has been traded from several source areas in Europe - in the alps and other forest areas in central Europe. Famous violin areas like Mittenwald and Markneukirchen may mainly have used rather local wood (and exported not only violins but also wood), but there will surely be exceptions. The altitude of those areas located in Germany and around may be at about 1000-1500 m.

Good tone wood should, beside good acoustic characteristics, also have a steady increment growth with as little variations as possibly and with straight fibers so not the wedges will look like propellers... The average ring width use to be 1-2 mm.

The most common way to build a violin top is to cut the same piece of wood into two halves and glue them together so that the youngest ring will be found in the middle. It also happens that wood from different trees are used and that pieces of wood are glued in other ways. In the normal case, with "butterflied" halves glued together - the measurements of the both sides of the instrument will show very high correlation values.

See also