Wood age matters?

[Mansfield Piggot]

3 hours ago, Violadamore said:

No.   

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

You saying there's no such thing as rock violin?

[Don Noon]

This might turn a violin to stone...

[Andreas Preuss]

I’d say there are proportions more important than simply age.

Split wood

relative weight 

Weight to stiffness 

How the yearrings are oriented in the wedge seen from the end.

what is the hardness of the winter years (are they rather pale or rather red) 

If all those factors are outside certain brackets age wouldn’t weight up against deficits. 
 

otherwise age only improves slightly weight to stiffness, because old wood doesn’t absorb moisture so much any more. 
 

Regarding an ‘age limit’ of wood I’d say that we are still waiting for the tonal collapse of famed instruments. (Didn’t happen so far)

[MANFIO]

1 hour ago, Don Noon said:

This might turn a violin to stone...

Ha!

[Don Noon]

36 minutes ago, Andreas Preuss said:

age only improves slightly weight to stiffness, because old wood doesn’t absorb moisture so much any more. 

Wood moisture has a significant effect on damping, which I think is far more important than stiffness/weight, especially for the higher frequencies.

40 minutes ago, Andreas Preuss said:

Regarding an ‘age limit’ of wood I’d say that we are still waiting for the tonal collapse of famed instruments. (Didn’t happen so far)

It's not like there's a "limit", beyond which there is catastrophic collapse.  It would be a very gradual, and I would expect some to say "it still sounds fantastic" while others just keep their mouths shut... especially if it is something worth a lot of money.  Or maybe some ears like the "collapsed sound".

I have heard a Strad that sounded collapsed to me... like the wood had turned to cardboard.  I'm sure there are many others that sounded better 50-100 years ago than they do today.  I'd like to see somebody prove me wrong.

 

[MANFIO]

Szeryng on old and new violins:

"What are the problems concerning antique violins?

I have talked at length with experts. The result is extremely simple. The material seasons and ages. With time the wood becomes more venerable... but ultimately ... too old.

It does not exactly decay, but cerainly does not improve, and loses elasticity.

I mostly play one of my two modern violins.

With all due respect, we must not forget that the finest classical violins are at least 250 years old. I am an incurable optimist, but I'm convinced that the Stradivaris, the Guarneris, the Amatis, the Grancinos, the Ruggeris, the Gaglianos and the Stainers will not be "playable" much longer unless they are completely restored.

This then gives rise to the problem of whether such an instrument can still be considered antique and original or whether instead it is the restorer who has bestowed upon that violin its balanced timbre and sonorousness, rather than the violinmaker who made it.

Consequently, the question arises of whether it is not more practical to resort from the beggining to a new instrument" (FRNAKFURTER ALLGEMEINE, Magazine, 30.01.87)

And in the Strad, september, 1988, we will find:

"In his final period, in addition to the "Le Duc, he (Szeryng) played on two French violins, one by Pierre Hel made in 1922 and the other by Jean Bauer, a comtemporary maker."

[Nick Lewis]

2 hours ago, Don Noon said:

This might turn a violin to stone...

That gets scarier the longer I look at it. First the missing corner, then the frets and who knows how many strings and then it looks more and more like a guitar. And it looks like her hair morphs into it. 

[Mansfield Piggot]

3 hours ago, Nick Lewis said:

That gets scarier the longer I look at it. 

Don't stare at that thing.  When you tell AI to make Medusa, it makes Medusa.

[lorenzo fossati]

Doesn't modern tech allow us to petrify wood in laboratory, let's petrify a violin!

[Don Noon]

3 hours ago, lorenzo fossati said:

let's petrify a violin!

With plates at ~500g, it might not sound too good, and carving and scraping them to get into a normal range might be difficult, especially getting to 0.3mm thickness.  Then it would sound bad in a different way. 

[lorenzo fossati]

3 hours ago, Don Noon said:

With plates at ~500g, it might not sound too good, and carving and scraping them to get into a normal range might be difficult, especially getting to 0.3mm thickness.  Then it would sound bad in a different way. 

and gouges and scrapers won't like it ehe, but sometimes resonances play strange games, so maybe not the top, but certain other parts, who knows if they won't benefit of a bit of petrification! I sometimes play my electrical guitar, disconnected from an amp, lying half the way down on the bed, and I lay her head on the wall. Her being in contact with a wall, greatly improves her tone and volume, just a brick wall though, not real stone

[Conor Russell]

A few thoughts on fresh v old wood.

Years ago, perhaps having read Roger’s article, I made a violin from really new wood, cut just a year or two. I glued up two sets with casein, concerned about shrinking pressure on the joints. I made a Testore model with one set, and threw the other up on the henhouse roof, to see how good the glue really was (it survived a year of Irish weather)

The fresh wood was very free to carve, and I really liked it. It also developed a suntan very quickly, and I had no distortion problems that I remember. I liked the idea that the wood would season as a violin, and I eventually varnished it and sold it.

it always amazes me just how much light comes through a new belly compared with an old violin’s. I’ve used some very old fronts, but can’t remember them being much less translucent. But with age, fronts let less and less light through. I wonder if the wood stiffens too. I, and several others have noticed that some of our violins became tight over twenty years or so, and have occasionally thinned the tops a bit because they seemed to have become stiff. 

[ctanzio]

There has actually been a lot of scientific research on material aging, including wood. There are even equations derived from theory, experiment and observation that do a decent job of predicting changes in a variety of material properties. If one is careful about selection of temperature and humidity, one can actually accelerate the natural aging of wood.

What is missing is a solid relation between sets of material properties and tonal excellence (whatever tonal excellence means).

Don Noon's observation about changes in damping due to aging is about the closest I've seen where one can make a reasoned statement about old wood being "better" than new wood. But lower damping doesn't always mean tonally better, because other factors like elasticity and density will also change and might offset the improvement in damping.

As a general observation, the rate at which properties change with age start rather high and exponentially decrease over time. After about 50 years, further changes become functionally meaningless. So, if one is using accelerated aging techniques to age wood, shooting for a 50-year mark is a good reference point.

[nathan slobodkin]

I think in some applications such as necks younger wood causes problems. Also possibly joint failures in other parts. Acoustically who knows.

 

I think quality and cutting make more difference than a few extra years but I tried to stay at least ten years ahead on my wood.

[Don Noon]

2 hours ago, nathan slobodkin said:

I think quality and cutting make more difference than a few extra years but I tried to stay at least ten years ahead on my wood.

I tried to measure the change in properties of a wedge or two, for just a few years, and couldn't find anything obvious.  One problem was that I don't have a controlled humidity envioronment, and humidity makes a measurable difference.

I think that the majority of any acoustic changes happen after carving and assembly (excluding torrefying).

On the issue of initial wood quality, I'm with you.

Here is a plot of density vs. speed of sound for the bulk of my wood inventory (before torrefying).  The Euro wood is from a variety of sources, obtained a set or two at a time.  The same-log Engelmann groups show the tighter grouping of properties when you use a single log.  These are sets I got from Kevin Prestwich, selected by me from several sample wedges, for the property ranges I wanted.

[Violadamore]

On 5/2/2026 at 6:05 PM, Don Noon said:

This might turn a violin to stone...

My first reaction to Piggot's post,

On 5/2/2026 at 3:34 AM, Mansfield Piggot said:

Not just degrading but turning into stone.

was to consider asking him if he'd been fantasizing about Medusa again, but I thought better of it.  Having seen that disturbing picture, one started to wonder once more.........and not just about Piggot.       

 

[Victor Roman]

Many years ago I tried out a violin made from very old wood. The top plate was supposed to be 600 years old and the back plate around 150-200. To my ear ( the 2nd violin of my quartet agreed ) there was nothing special about the tone - it sounded like a fairly good new violin one can go through the Conservatory with. It had one clear quality : it felt flexible when played. 

I had opportunity to play a number of violins made from 2-3 years old wood and they were fine. Bit stiff and a bit false but nothing to write a letter of complaint about. Usable. There was an idea circulating at the time ( '68 ? ) that if the wood is "new" the violin becomes noisy as it ages. 

[Mansfield Piggot]

A guy makes a guitar out of wood from 3,000 BC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJrNuPneORk

 

[Don Noon]

9 hours ago, Mansfield Piggot said:

A guy makes a guitar out of wood from 3,000 BC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJrNuPneORk

Very nice project; well done.  Two things...

Bogs have unusual preservation properties, being oxygen-free, that prevents oxidation or other microbe or fungus attack.

It sounds like a guitar, but you'd have to do comparisons with other good modern guitars to hear the differences.

Extra thing:  It would have been nice to know the properties of the sinker cypress used for the soundboard.

Now that the wood is out of the bog and made into a guitar, the degradation can begin.

[Conor Russell]

I made a cello with pre ice age pine from the bog years ago. It was incredibly strong and resonant. But working it was brutal. It was so full of silica that the tools blunted  almost immediately, and the resin built up behind the edges, so I constantly had to clean them with acetone. 
 

I made it for Peter Kilroy, who made Irish harps, the proper old ones, with boxes of willow and soundboards of bog pine. Fantastic instruments, well worth looking into if you find the time.

[Marty Kasprzyk]

I made a viola top plate from Douglas fir wood taken from an old log boom that that had been submerged for about a century in a Canadian river. It was easy to carve and looked good but it sounded like it was still under water.

[David Burgess]

On 5/2/2026 at 7:04 PM, Andreas Preuss said:

I’d say there are proportions more important than simply age.

Split wood

relative weight 

Weight to stiffness 

How the yearrings are oriented in the wedge seen from the end.

what is the hardness of the winter years (are they rather pale or rather red) 

If all those factors are outside certain brackets age wouldn’t weight up against deficits. 

I've made successful instruments which didn't conform to most of those "rules".

[Andreas Preuss]

4 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

I've made successful instruments which didn't conform to most of those "rules".

So which rule does matter to you?

[David Burgess]

On 5/13/2026 at 11:02 AM, Don Noon said:

Very nice project; well done.  Two things...

Bogs have unusual preservation properties, being oxygen-free, that prevents oxidation or other microbe or fungus attack.

Yes, and that's a bit weird, since there has also been a lot of hoopla about the supposed advantages of oxidized and fungus-degraded wood.

[Don Noon]

4 hours ago, David Burgess said:

Yes, and that's a bit weird, since there has also been a lot of hoopla about the supposed advantages of oxidized and fungus-degraded wood.

There has been a lot of hoopla about lots of different abnormal things.  Normal things that have worked well for hundreds of years are not hooplaable.