How would it be possible to pull sound from different woods, transforming them in-to musical instruments without knowing their natures? Impossible!
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This is a day-by-day process. One can only get the needed closeness with wood by dealing everyday with this marvelous natural material. Only then you can choose one or another piece for this or that function.
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In talking about instruments there is a complication: Our tradition of instrument came from Europe, so we began in using here the woods available there. Imported or national, each wood exhibits it’s own characteristics and needs special preparation Drying properly is of utmost importance. All woods must be completely dried before use. Kiln dried wood is not the same as naturally dried wood. Even the season of cutting the tree will make a difference in the resulting wood.
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The experimented timber fallers would say: “in order to get good wood, one should only cut trees in the months without R” ( may, june, july and august – in Portuguese: maio, junho, julho e agosto). When we look closer to we find that the basis for this belief lies in the fact that these is the season of lowest rain fall over a large portion of Brasil, so the trees have less fluids in them Although there is a diversity of woods found in tropical forests, the preoccupation in establishing similarities to traditional instrument-making woods is recent. Some tropical woods substitute for traditional woods with advantages.
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IPT-USP (Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas – Universidade de São Paulo) conducted study in species with commercial uses. FUNARTE-IBDF (Fundação Nacional de Arte – Instituto Brasileiro de Desenvolvimento Florestal) did research into finding Brasilian woods which were equivalent to traditional European woods. Much individual research has been done by luthiers. But musicians, the final consumer, resist in accepting an instrument made with non-traditional woods.
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In my personal history of learning about woods and deciding which ones to use to get the best possible results (considering acoustics, mechanical stability, durability and aesthetics) I can’t omit three great wood-working masters from whom I learned a lot in endless talks full of tips and practical examples, that gave me the basis for knowing better this noble material: Sr. Heraldo Ramos, retired Woodcraftsman from Belgo Mineira, Sabará (coincidentally “Santa Cecília Musical society” president and player in their band for many years). Sr. Edyl Lourenço, honorably graduated from “Escola Técnica de Minas Gerais” today dedicated to making musical instrument cases. And Sr. Fernando Fé, graduated from SENAI Scholl in Sabará, passed away years ago, who in his latter years was famous for his massive wood sculptural work in the plywood era.
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Here are photographic samples with brief descriptions of the woods I most commonly use for instrument making.