 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: John Gould
Date: 2001-10-20 00:43
Is there anywhere in the US that one could grow grenadilla of a quality sufficient for making clarinets? Is there anywhere in the world besides Africa that this has been done? If one desired, could one call Sally Struthers or someone and adopt a grenadilla (blackwood, etc.) tree? Thanks, John G.
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Author: Peter
Date: 2001-10-20 04:30
Don't know if you could do that in the U.S., but I understand it takes 100 years, or so, of growth before a tree has sufficient proper grain structure in the heart to make a decent clarinet that won't split just for the heck of it.
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Author: Robert Small
Date: 2001-10-20 05:03
Grenadilla is a tropical hardwood and probably wouldn't do well in a temperate zone climate.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2001-10-20 06:28
Dalbergia melanoxylon ('African blackwood', 'grenadilla') is from the dry forests and savanna, esp. in Tanzania and Mozambique. It is a tropical/subtropical climate, but not a wet one as some people may think.
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Author: Stephen Froehlich
Date: 2001-10-20 13:49
That climate is much like south central Texas and California. A wet season could be easily simulated by irrigation.
I don't know if they'd take to Florida soils, though.
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Author: Brenda Siewert
Date: 2001-10-20 14:56
I don't know that they would grow here in South Central Texas---but I've seen them first hand in Mozambique and other places in Africa and they are beautiful and unique trees.
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Author: Stephen Froehlich
Date: 2001-10-20 17:36
It freezes in Abilene too much, I was thinking the coastal plain or just around San Antonio. Once you drop below the Balcones Escarpment, it gets a lot warmer.
Are there picutures of these trees (alive) anywhere?
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Author: John Gould
Date: 2001-10-20 21:29
What about a greenhouse? If the wood is becoming as rare as some posts / info
say, could you somehow buy some seeds or saplings? I should probably ask someone at a botany dept. w/ a university....
Related question : has anyone out there ever played a clarinet made exclusively of ebony? Anything to say about tone, etc.? Thanks, John G.
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Author: Jim (E)
Date: 2001-10-21 06:00
While I have no specific knowledge of the African hardwoods, as a wood worker I am most interested in the future availability and quality of wood. The difficulty in cultivating trees, beyond the long wait for harvest, is in duplicating the conditions that created the desirable traits in the wood of the old growth trees. These conditions have to do with shade from other plants and other factors which control the growth rate of trees in the wild. Cultivated softwoods have much wider grain lines (fewer growth rings) and are weaker and have many more defects.
The solution of the lumber industry has been to move to "engineered" wood, products like plywood, flake board (OSB) fiberboard (MDF) veneered lumber (LVLs) I joists (TJIs) and so on. This allows the use of inferior trees by eliminating their defects in a factory. The housing industry is moving (slowly) toward steel for framing. The hardwoods I use for cabinet work (mostly red oak) become increasingly more expensive. I've given up on buying clear white pine as the cost vs. defects isn't worth it.
I suspect the Greenline horns from Buffet are their way of moving toward engineered materials.
Its sad, we've mostly used up an earth full of desirable lumber.
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Author: Robert Small
Date: 2001-10-21 16:48
I read somewhere that the great Cremonese violin makers (Stradivari, Guarneri, etc.) believed that the best spruce for the sound board (top) came from the north slopes of the Carpathian Mountains. And I think they preferred Bulgarian maple for the back and sides. That would seem to limit the availability of desirable woods for violin making. I believe the Greenline material for clarinets is the wave of the future.
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Author: Robert Small
Date: 2001-10-22 18:15
I just looked at the pictures of the Mpingo tree (from the link provided above) and was surprised at how small it was. It looks like an orchard type tree like the apple tree. I always figured these African "blackwood" trees were big rain forest tall canopy trees.
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