Wood age matters?

[Ken Lau]

Hi All,

I have been frequently offered by some violin-makers indicating the front board was made from long-aged wood, such as over 20 yrs, 30 yrs or even 50 yrs. It seems to me that they used the number of aged years to present the value of the instrument. I can understand dried wood can produce clear sound. However, does that means the longer the better? Meanwhile, aged wood can be brittle and needs attention to take care. Is there any threshold that the age can be back-fired once over? 

 

[Dr. Mark]

I think it began as a plausible, hopeful, assumption.  But in (from what I understand) the absence of concrete evidence that it offers any improvement to violin tone...

[Don Noon]

Concrete, objective evidence is hard to come by.  Subjectively, wood dries (from a moisture standpoint) relatively quickly, in a matter of months or less; much less if kiln drying is used.  There are many other non-cellulose components in the wood, with varying degrees of evaporation, oxidation, or polymerization happening more slowly.

These may be subjective words, but you can just look and see huge differences between old wood and fresh wood.  Something has changed.  There's no reason to think that the acoustic properties have NOT changed.

Many makers with tap billets and listen for the "ring" to decide if it has aged enough to use.  I am more quantitative about things, and measure the damping rate.  I have seen some evidence that damping is reduced over time, but haven't had a controlled test over decades to say much further.  I speed things up (possibly) by hydrothermal processing the wood, where the largest change by far is the reduction in damping.

 I was given a 300 year old sample of Italian spruce to test, cut from the beam of a building.  The properties measured similar to decently aged newer wood, nothing outstanding, but lower damping than I usually see in fresh wood.  Curiously, the wood was translucent like modern (not fresh) wood, rather than the total opaque character of wood in 300 year old violins.  This may imply that aging in a beam (or wedge of wood) is not the same as aging after being carved into a thin plate.

Blah blah blah... but to answer your question:  if I was going to use naturally aged wood, a few years would be OK, 10-20 would be nice, and I don't think you could ever get "too old".  I wouldn't pay a lot extra for the age, though.

[lorenzo fossati]

I think the difference between a log and another log, and the difference between a location and another, is much more drastically pronounced than the difference between an aged piece and a fresh piece from the same log (saying it hypothetically, since when you cut the tree, usually you chop chop it from the base)

Also, I am not sure if anyone ever tested, but would be interesting to know if there is difference given by "orientation" say, the piece that faces north, vs the pieces that face other cardinal directions, all obtained from the same slab of wood. in other words, how earth magnetism affects the tonal quality of wood. 

[Violadamore]

57 minutes ago, lorenzo fossati said:

I think the difference between a log and another log, and the difference between a location and another, is much more drastically pronounced than the difference between an aged piece and a fresh piece from the same log (saying it hypothetically, since when you cut the tree, usually you chop chop it from the base)

Also, I am not sure if anyone ever tested, but would be interesting to know if there is difference given by "orientation" say, the piece that faces north, vs the pieces that face other cardinal directions, all obtained from the same slab of wood. in other words, how earth magnetism affects the tonal quality of wood. 

IMHO, orientation effects, if present, would be due to incident sunlight rather than magnetism.  You will see more moss, etc., growing on the bark on the shaded side, rather than on the one facing the sun, because the shaded side is protected from UV, retains more moisture during the day, etc.  This could have some (probably complicated) effect on the tree's growth rings.   

Wood aging, in regard to the OP question, only begins when the tree is cut, and the wood starts to dry out.  Aging wood in dry storage for several years before you cut it into billets and carve it makes it more stable against warping and shrinkage, and will cause some definite changes in tonal characteristics.   

[lorenzo fossati]

29 minutes ago, Violadamore said:

IMHO, orientation effects, if present, would be due to incident sunlight rather than magnetism.  You will see more moss, etc., growing on the bark on the shaded side, rather than on the one facing the sun, because the shaded side is protected from UV, retains more moisture during the day, etc.  This could have some (probably complicated) effect on the tree's growth rings.   

Yes I agree on that too, but magnetism I think has very much impact on tree growth, on certain terrains, for example on my garden many do that, trees are prone to twist on the z axis, and I think its strongly connected to the magnetic field (I may be wrong, though) making them by consequence warp-a-lot after cutting is done.

[Deo Lawson]

I have never made an instrument with old wood, but I have done repairs on many, and I can tell you firsthand it does absolutely matter. I've seen some late 19thC - early 19thC instruments of very modest build quality sound far, far better than they ought to---in my opinion on account of the timber.

Old wood is lighter, but retains the same stiffness. Or perhaps becomes even more stiff? It is definitely brittle. I don't know, I'm not a woodologist, just a musician and luthier.

 

[Michael Darnton]

I've told this story here before. At one place I worked the shop was given 12 sets from someone's reputable German grandfather maker's stash: 100 year old wood. It was all different (different trees). It was split between the senior maker and the #2--senior taking the best looking. Violins were completed, compared. Senior maker immediately seized the whole remainder.

There was a difference, and it was big enough for everyone to notice. I was able to check a few violins a couple of months after they were made and it had all mostly leveled out--after some time and use those violins weren't definitely superior.

[GeorgeH]

5 hours ago, Don Noon said:

Concrete, objective evidence is hard to come by.

Actually, it is impossible to come by but people want to believe what they want to believe. They want to see what they want to see. They want to hear what they want to hear. 

Magnetism is a new one for me, though. 

[Violadamore]

At the other end of the business from @Michael Darnton, while demonstrating Markies to a customer at my home, I had a humorously embarrassing experience that firmly convinced me of the tonal reality of wood aging, even over the short term.

Back about 2008, I'd purchased a very pretty Chinese-made Mirecourt clone off eBay for about $150 (this dropped to $50 once a dispute was resolved  ).  It was a marvel to look at, externally and internally, but once you put bow to strings, the beauty evaporated.  The tone was dismal, and despite firm adherence to a Strad pattern, the power was lacking.  No matter what I did to it in terms of setup, it remained acoustically hopeless, so I hung it up as a wall decoration.  It was very good for that.

Fast forward about 5 years, I was showing a college student a selection of presentable resurrected usuals, when the conversation turned to what "good" versus "bad" might mean in violin tone.  I told her that I could definitely show her what "awful" meant, taking the Chinese trade fiddle off the wall, tuning it, and launching into part of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, in full expectation that the miserable thing would squawk like a chicken.......

............and lo and behold, the angels sang!!   

While this was briefly disruptive, when we returned to the usuals, I went into the shop and found a beaver-chewed example that I hadn't resurrected yet, and illustrated "awful" right thoroughly.  She picked out a Markie that she liked, and I made some money.  Then I started investigating the amazing change in the wall hanger.

The violin had hung on the wall for five years, undisturbed except for cleaning, with no change to the last setup I'd done, yet had gone from submediocrity to really good performance for a student-grade violin.  It's stayed good since, and maybe improved some more.  While it still lacks the subtleties I prefer for classical performance, and doesn't project as well as some I have, it has a clear purity of tone.  It sounds nothing like it did when I first got it, and is much easier to play.  BTW, it hasn't visibly deformed, or anything like that, and hasn't needed any repairs.

The only explanation I have is that its wood must have been still very new when I got it, but then the wood's tonality improved with time.  

[Mansfield Piggot]

The problem is one of memory, I think.  In cases like machines, something either works or doesn't, not a complicated memory.  But complicated memories are...complicated.

[David Burgess]

8 hours ago, lorenzo fossati said:

Also, I am not sure if anyone ever tested, but would be interesting to know if there is difference given by "orientation" say, the piece that faces north, vs the pieces that face other cardinal directions, all obtained from the same slab of wood. in other words, how earth magnetism affects the tonal quality of wood. 

Aren't the best results obtained from the parts of the tree facing Mecca? 
As far as the magnetism thing goes, I'll bring along my compass the next time I visit the Bermuda Triangle.

Interesting sidenote: I may still have a rough draft of an article I wrote about 30 years ago, with the intent of submitting it to The Stad magazine during a time when I thought they were over-venturing into La-La land.

It advised positioning a number of horseshoe magnets around the plates during carving. One properly oriented set would duplicate the magnetic fields of Cremona (hence producing a Cremona sound), but other orientations of the magnets could also duplicate a Brescian sound, a Mittenwald sound, or a French sound.
 

[Ken Lau]

8 hours ago, Michael Darnton said:

I've told this story here before. At one place I worked the shop was given 12 sets from someone's reputable German grandfather maker's stash: 100 year old wood. It was all different (different trees). It was split between the senior maker and the #2--senior taking the best looking. Violins were completed, compared. Senior maker immediately seized the whole remainder.

There was a difference, and it was big enough for everyone to notice. I was able to check a few violins a couple of months after they were made and it had all mostly leveled out--after some time and use those violins weren't definitely superior.

haha, it seems to me like coffee debate.  People often argues which coffee-maker  roasts better coffee beans. However, it turns out the provenance of beans matters most.

[Ken Lau]

13 hours ago, Don Noon said:

Concrete, objective evidence is hard to come by.  Subjectively, wood dries (from a moisture standpoint) relatively quickly, in a matter of months or less; much less if kiln drying is used.  There are many other non-cellulose components in the wood, with varying degrees of evaporation, oxidation, or polymerization happening more slowly.

These may be subjective words, but you can just look and see huge differences between old wood and fresh wood.  Something has changed.  There's no reason to think that the acoustic properties have NOT changed.

Many makers with tap billets and listen for the "ring" to decide if it has aged enough to use.  I am more quantitative about things, and measure the damping rate.  I have seen some evidence that damping is reduced over time, but haven't had a controlled test over decades to say much further.  I speed things up (possibly) by hydrothermal processing the wood, where the largest change by far is the reduction in damping.

 I was given a 300 year old sample of Italian spruce to test, cut from the beam of a building.  The properties measured similar to decently aged newer wood, nothing outstanding, but lower damping than I usually see in fresh wood.  Curiously, the wood was translucent like modern (not fresh) wood, rather than the total opaque character of wood in 300 year old violins.  This may imply that aging in a beam (or wedge of wood) is not the same as aging after being carved into a thin plate.

Blah blah blah... but to answer your question:  if I was going to use naturally aged wood, a few years would be OK, 10-20 would be nice, and I don't think you could ever get "too old".  I wouldn't pay a lot extra for the age, though.

Totally agree! 

[Ken Lau]

11 hours ago, lorenzo fossati said:

I think the difference between a log and another log, and the difference between a location and another, is much more drastically pronounced than the difference between an aged piece and a fresh piece from the same log (saying it hypothetically, since when you cut the tree, usually you chop chop it from the base)

Also, I am not sure if anyone ever tested, but would be interesting to know if there is difference given by "orientation" say, the piece that faces north, vs the pieces that face other cardinal directions, all obtained from the same slab of wood. in other words, how earth magnetism affects the tonal quality of wood. 

Interesting! I have the same belief.

[baroquecello]

I wish now that I had written down where, but a couple of years ago I read an article about research that claimed that wood improves acoustically for about 400 years and after that starts degrading because it starts to petrify and lose acoustic qualities. It claimed that therefore many old Italian violins where going to be degrading, or in case old wood had been used when building,  had already passed their apex.

[Mansfield Piggot]

36 minutes ago, baroquecello said:

wood improves acoustically for about 400 years and after that starts degrading because it starts to petrify and lose acoustic qualities. It claimed that therefore many old Italian violins where going to be degrading

Not just degrading but turning into stone.

[lorenzo fossati]

7 hours ago, David Burgess said:

Aren't the best results obtained from the parts of the tree facing Mecca? 
As far as the magnetism thing goes, I'll bring along my compass the next time I visit the Bermuda Triangle.

Interesting sidenote: I may still have a rough draft of an article I wrote about 30 years ago, with the intent of submitting it to The Stad magazine during a time when I thought they were over-venturing into La-La land.

It advised positioning a number of horseshoe magnets around the plates during carving. One properly oriented set would duplicate the magnetic fields of Cremona (hence producing a Cremona sound), but other orientations of the magnets could also duplicate a Brescian sound, a Mittenwald sound, or a French sound.
 

Very funny

[baroquecello]

12 minutes ago, Mansfield Piggot said:

Not just degrading but turning into stone.

Well yes, and that is a little strange. Previously I understood that petrification takes place only under certain conditions. (No oxygen, mineral rich water, pressure, at least thousands of years) which this article seemed to disagree with.

[GeorgeH]

15 hours ago, Violadamore said:

The only explanation I have is that its wood must have been still very new when I got it, but then the wood's tonality improved with time.  

The “only explanation”? Time to sharpen Occam’s razor. Here are a few much more plausible explanations:

- 5 year-old strings

- Reverse expectation bias

- Setup stabilization

- Humidity equilibration cycles

- Instrument stress relaxation

- Different bow

- Player improvement

- Physical hearing changes

 

 

[MANFIO]

I love using old wood, it has a "biscuit" like texture. 

The Hills, in their book about Stradivari, mention that makers had to use the wood they had. And this wood sometimes was not all that kosher. 

Roger Hargrave, on his excellent article about Guarneri del Gesù (Biddulph book) points out to the use of fresh wood, I will quote him:

"Dendrochronological analysis has shown that Del
Gesù’s belly wood was often no more than three or
four years old when the violins were constructed. At
the time of writing, maple cannot be subjected to
such analysis, and any assumptions about its season-
ing should not be based on data concerning the
fronts. Nevertheless, circumstantial evidence sug-
gests that Del Gesù’s back wood was also quite fresh
when worked. The bodies of his instruments often
underwent extreme twisting – more so than those of 

any of his Cremonese contemporaries: Invariably the
figures of the backs have a strong corrugated texture
when the fingertips are run lightly across them, and
even the year rings can feel slightly rippled. Fur-
thermore, Del Gesù’s centre joints frequently show
signs of having moved and separated, a rare occur-
rence in the work of the classical makers. Such de-
tails, coupled with the notion that the back wood was
used in batches and the implications of the unques-
tionably fresh belly wood, suggest that Del Gesù had
no large stock of old well-seasoned back wood"

... ...

Even those instru-
ments which appear to have been made with some-
what older wood may still have been constructed
with fresh timber, as the youngest available year ring
can be much older than the date at which the tree
was felled: The youngest year rings on the wedge may
simply have been removed.

... ...

Del Gesù used even fresher wood:
The “Lord Wilton” (1742) and the “Carrodus” (1743)
were both taken from a log cut down no earlier than
1739, while the belly wood for the “King Joseph”
(1737) was cut no earlier than 1734 – possibly a year
or two later, if we take into account the amount of
wood which normally needs to be removed for the
joint. The master must have heard the echo of bird-
song ringing through it as he cut the outlines. The
“Stern” (1737) has a belly made from two unmatched
pieces, one of which comes from the same fresh log
as the “King Joseph”, the other from a marginally
older log. Unmatched bellies are common among Del
Gesù’s later instruments, the “Heifetz” (c.1740), the
“Sauret” (c.1743) and the “Ole Bull” (1744) being no-
table examples. However, all three have half-bellies
in common. This may have been a deliberate strat-
egy, or perhaps the stock had become hopelessly
mixed up.

 

 

[Christian Pedersen]

17 hours ago, Violadamore said:

At the other end of the business from @Michael Darnton, while demonstrating Markies to a customer at my home, I had a humorously embarrassing experience that firmly convinced me of the tonal reality of wood aging, even over the short term.

Back about 2008, I'd purchased a very pretty Chinese-made Mirecourt clone off eBay for about $150 (this dropped to $50 once a dispute was resolved  ).  It was a marvel to look at, externally and internally, but once you put bow to strings, the beauty evaporated.  The tone was dismal, and despite firm adherence to a Strad pattern, the power was lacking.  No matter what I did to it in terms of setup, it remained acoustically hopeless, so I hung it up as a wall decoration.  It was very good for that.

Fast forward about 5 years, I was showing a college student a selection of presentable resurrected usuals, when the conversation turned to what "good" versus "bad" might mean in violin tone.  I told her that I could definitely show her what "awful" meant, taking the Chinese trade fiddle off the wall, tuning it, and launching into part of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, in full expectation that the miserable thing would squawk like a chicken.......

............and lo and behold, the angels sang!!   

While this was briefly disruptive, when we returned to the usuals, I went into the shop and found a beaver-chewed example that I hadn't resurrected yet, and illustrated "awful" right thoroughly.  She picked out a Markie that she liked, and I made some money.  Then I started investigating the amazing change in the wall hanger.

The violin had hung on the wall for five years, undisturbed except for cleaning, with no change to the last setup I'd done, yet had gone from submediocrity to really good performance for a student-grade violin.  It's stayed good since, and maybe improved some more.  While it still lacks the subtleties I prefer for classical performance, and doesn't project as well as some I have, it has a clear purity of tone.  It sounds nothing like it did when I first got it, and is much easier to play.  BTW, it hasn't visibly deformed, or anything like that, and hasn't needed any repairs.

The only explanation I have is that its wood must have been still very new when I got it, but then the wood's tonality improved with time.  

I'd be more likely to attribute the remarkable improvement in this violin to the continued drying or curing of the varnish. 

--Christian 

[Don Noon]

10 hours ago, baroquecello said:

I read an article about research that claimed that wood improves acoustically for about 400 years and after that starts degrading because it starts to petrify and lose acoustic qualities. It claimed that therefore many old Italian violins where going to be degrading, or in case old wood had been used when building,  had already passed their apex.

9 hours ago, Mansfield Piggot said:

Not just degrading but turning into stone.

9 hours ago, baroquecello said:

Well yes, and that is a little strange. Previously I understood that petrification takes place only under certain conditions. (No oxygen, mineral rich water, pressure, at least thousands of years) which this article seemed to disagree with.

"Stone" has large amounts of silicon, aluminum, and calcium, among others.  Wood has virtually none of those, so it can't turn into stone.  It CAN have those minerals fill or replace the original hydrocarbons (cellulose, hemicellulose, etc.), brought in by dissolved minerals in water.  Then it is stoned.

Wood in a violin doesn't do that, but undergoes a mix of polymerization and degradation... primarily in the hemicellulose and lignin, although the extremely stable cellulose can break down eventually.

How, and how quickly things happen can vary a lot.  Moisture, temperature, and attacks by fungus and microbes are huge factors in breakdown and degradation.  A new violin left outside in a rain forest ain't gonna last long.

A well cared for violin, not exposed to that kind of degradation, I think would first see varnish curing and polymerization of the softer wood components... acoustically reducing damping and allowing more efficient sound production ("good").  The balance point between that "good" change and subsequent degradation is highly debatable.  I recently attended a concert where the violin played was approaching the 400 year mark.  The E string sounded nice, but to me the lower strings sounded too "round"... i.e. had lost most of their edges.  There could be many reasons for the sound other than age, though.

[Violadamore]

9 hours ago, Mansfield Piggot said:

Not just degrading but turning into stone.

No.   

Read what @Don Noon already said, but read this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrified_wood too.  

[Will Turner]

Interesting topic.  I’m too new a maker to have an educated opinion, but I certainly find older dried tonewood easier to work.

 I know it tends to dry quickly, but I find wood that has been split into billets and cured a minimum of 10 years far easier to work with.  I did make some with “younger” wood and it just didn’t feel the same under the gouges and planes.

No green wood though, I know it can shrink resulting in an unstable instrument.