Author: Matt74
Date: 2017-09-29 20:25
The following is totally unscientific, largely speculation, but not totally ignorant.
People often talk about the quality of wood in everything from houses to clarinets, and the consensus is that it is declining. It is especially of interest with CITES. I offer the following for discussion, clarification, confirmation, and perhaps debunking.
1. All the "old growth" trees are gone. Partly true, but I don't know if this applies to Clarinets and Dalbergia.
I think the following more likely, but I don't know how much it applies to Clarinets..
2. Modern timber is cut using modern methods, which are rough. For example, for softwoods there is a machine that grabs the tree, cuts it off at the stump, throws it over, and literally breaks all the branches off in seconds. Google it - it's amazing. Not all are treated this way, and probably not hardwoods, but modern machinery used to handle lumber of all sorts is extremely powerful. In everything from hoists and drags, to helicopters and lifts on trucks timber is treated very harshly. Modern sawmills are more powerful and handle lumber with machine driven sawmills at great speed. This is in great contrast to hand felling and handling using horses and water, which depended a lot on working with physics and the nature of trees, rather than dominating them.
3. Modern lumber is "standardized". Trees are cut to certain lengths, and cut to standard sizes in mechanical sawmills. Cutters and sawyers used to be able to use more judgement in handling individual pieces, cutting them for the best utilization of the wood.
4. Modern lumber is kiln dried. Lumber used to be air dried, which took A LOT longer. Kiln drying is probably harder on the wood. The longer air drying period probably gave the wood the opportunity to adjust and split if it wanted to, before being made into anything. If you have been to a lumber yard you know that the wood is gets all twisty after it's cut, either from tensions in the wood, or the way it's stored.
5. People don't care about quality the way they used to, and use poorer quality wood. Wood prices, which are very high, have something to do with this.
6. Older wooden objects, including horns, are still around because they were made with the best wood. All the wood that was going to fall apart and split did so, and the horns were discarded, or indefinitely stored.
- Matthew Simington
Post Edited (2017-09-29 20:29)
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