Sustainable Luthierie_ a Pioneer's Guide

8/13/2019 Sustainable Luthierie_ a Pioneer's Guide

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Sustainable Luthierie: A Pioneer's Guide

The luthier has for many centuries striven to improve, hone and evolve themusician's tool. The search for improvements has led to experimentation

with every conceivable resource, often from far afield. This is the reasonwhy great ports of international trade became during the Renaissance andBaroque eras the heart of European luthierie. Thus adua and !enice forexample were good places for luthiers to settle" near enough to theconiferous forests for the fir for bellies but also plenty of trade in the moreexotic# ivory$ %frican and &ndian, and later outh %merican timber. o itwas that luthiers such as (rei, )ahler and *nverdoben settled in +orthern&taly.

Jost Amman, a 16thcentury wood-engraver carved this drawing der Lautenmacher


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)any of the innovations in material use are now considered traditional. &nfact, & argue, innovation itself is traditional, and the conservation- of aparticular tradition or choice of wood threatens the survival of our trade,and of course our environment, not to mention taing away our ability to

evaluate for ourselves. (irst, let's examine some of the main species, woodand animal, with a long history of use by luthiers and consider theirvarious impacts and the properties that mae them desirable.

Ivory

&vory derives from mammoth,elephant, rhinoceros and walrustus. /umans have recogni0ed itsqualities of durability, worability,resonance and beauty for over12,222 years. The oldestsurviving musical instruments areivory flutes from the stone age.)ost sources are either extinct orendangered. /uman predationwas liely a contributing factor inthe extinction of the mammoth. Elephant ivory was once plentiful enoughto be used for maing lute ribs, typically alternated with ebony. %s a nutand saddle material it is unsurpassed. &n 3454, 6&TE banned the trade inivory# the trade in Europe and *% was outlawed and the global pricethereby crashed. oaching continues, and any trade in elephant ivoryproducts, even material from before the ban, effectively increases ivory'smaret value and thereby supports further exploitation.)ammoth ivory can be distinguised by its distinctive herring bone"lieend"grain figure and is a costly but viable alternative for restoration wor.(or new maing, bone or wood 7eg hornbeam, carpinus betulus,or holly,ilex paucilora8 are useablealternatives.

!vory theorbo, "ichael #auche, 1$6%, & ' A


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Ebony,Diospyros

The timber is as beautiful as a polished stone, durable, even grained, easilywored, and the heartwood is very dar brown or blac. The darness and

uniformity of colour mae it the obvious choice of material forfingerboards, where it will wear slowly and not discolour from the sweatand dirt of the player's hands. &t will contrast with any varnish colour andcan be invisibly filled with superglue and charcoal or ebony dust. &t is nowthe traditional- material for pegs, tailpiece, endbutton and chinrest. &twas sometimes used for lute ribs, providing a clear and powerful contrastto ivory.There are about 9:2 species of ebonyglobally, all but a handful in the tropics.)ost are endangered and species reachextinction before the life"cycle has beenunderstood. ;iospyros are important in theirnative ecosystems in /awaii, outh %merica,%frica, )adagascar and %sia, supportinglarge numbers of endangered insects andmammals. ome bear fruits eaten byhumans# persimmon or sharron fruit.

6ase study 3 # )pingo, %frican blacwood,dalbergia meloanoxylon( Technically this isa rosewood not an ebony, though blac incolour. The natives of Tan0ania and


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used for violin family fingerboards and fittings. Extreme poverty and thegovernment's corruption in )adagasgar fuel the massive illegal loggingoperations for this timber and rosewood. )uch of this timber is exportedto 6hina whose advance payments are very persuasive. &t is then wored

into fingerboard blans and pegs and sold to Europe and %merica. &t hasbeen explicitly banned since ?222, but cyclone timber is a legal loophole.)usical instrument fingerboards and fittings create a constant highdemand. *nless demand alters through public pressure and a 6&TE ban,the future for )adagasgar ebony is blea.

!llegal ebony and rosewoodlogged in "adagasgar

Pernambuco, Brasilwood, Pau-Brasil,

Caesalpinia echinata. +ote# in the worldof archetierie, the name Brasilwood isused to denote any of a number of other%ma0on species used as dyewoods which

are not caesalpinia echinata, which isdistinguised as pernambuco.

)utting *rasilwood, rom Andre +hevet, Les singularite

de la rance Antarti.ue, 1//$


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&t was first and devastatingly harvested by the ortuguese and (rench forthe red dye which can be extracted from it. /eavy and rot"resistant, it wasalso a perfect material for ship ballast. Exploitation of the wood and thenative Tupinamba people began in 3:22. The 3thcentury saw a sharpdecline due to over"harvesting and the decimation of the Tupinambathrough disease and mistreatment. 6ochineal too its place as a red dye.ernambuco is endangered, and its harvesting and trade restricted by law.The &nternational ernambuco 6onservation &nitiative is woring toreplant this species, but is hampered by the fact that it is a climaxcommunity species-$ this means it only develops well when plantedamongst secondary forest vegetation. Through the process of ecologicalsuccession this taes a very long time.

This wood from which Bra0il taes its name has a dense orange"redheartwood and taes a fine shine. &t is the woodpar excellence for violinbows$ since (rancois Tourte the standard. % violin bow needs to be denseand elastic, durable, worable and easily bent. )ass, stiffness andmechanical damping properties are three of the main physical criteria forgood bow"wood. % density over 3222gCm1is desirable. >ighter stics aredubbed floaters-. &t should be heavy enough that the lowest bow forcescan be achieved by self"weight of bow with only nominal player effort. &t

must be stiff to reach hair"tension without over"straightening. The springstiffness of hair must be high for bow"dynamic control, and the stic mustbe laterally stiff for playability. ernambuco has an exceptionally highDoung's modulus for its density and an extremely low loss co"efficient.% few other species represent alternatives, namely snaewood, brosimumguianense0 and massaranduba, manilara elata( *nfortunately these arealso endangered due to habitat loss.6arbon fibre and bamboo are the most viable contenders for violin bows of

the future.

Bowood, buxus sempervirens. Beautiful, dense and stable with lowdamping, this wood was used extensively in luthierie before theavailability of new, exotic tropical hardwoods. nce much more plentiful,it has been greatly over"harvested, though still relatively common in theyrenees. &t stains beautifully with nitric acid fuming. !astelo bo,lemonwood, calycophyllum multiflorum, is not a true box, but an

%ma0onian timber. *nsustainably forested causing much habitat loss, it isavailable in large not"free boards, maing it ideal for mass production of


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violin fittings. &f a peg costs only A1, it will be tropical, not European box.%s soon as the peg goes in the peg"shaper, the inferiority of this timber isobvious.

A Scienti"ic System "or evaluation o" alternative materials

f the woods used in the construction of violins, the spruce and maplin ofthe belly and bac are the only ones sustainably forested. Endangeredebony for fingerboards and fittings, and rosewood for fittings have becomethe industry standard.Tony )ason of %lexander %ssessories notes that the number of fine violinsfitted with rosewood pegs, ebony tailpiece and boxwood chinrest is toogreat to be without foundation. /e states that rosewood simply worsbetter than ebony for pegs, whilst box has the least damping for a chinrest.>ucchi expressly states that ebony should be used as a fingerboardmaterial because it does not need to vibrate, whereas its high dampingmae it unsuitable for pegs, tailpieces and chinrests, for which box with itshigh density but low damping should always be used. ne can't help butnotice the anomaly here# >ucchi clearly does not rate ebony as atonewood, yet is happy to use it for fingerboards. &s this merely a case ofits other desirable qualities, 7colour, durability and it's association as exoticand valuable8, over"riding its unsuitability acousticallyF &'m aware thatthis assertion constitutes heresy in the violin world. Baroque fingerboardswith their light"weight willow or poplar core, veneered in denser ebonyadd credence to this belief.Thomas )ace tals of the acoustic unsuitability of ebony in his )usic's)onument, >ondon 3==# The %ir"wood is absolutely the Best. %nd nextto that, ur English )aple. But there are very Good >utes of several@oods$ as lum"Tree, ear"Tree, Dew, Rosemary"%ir, %sh,2bony, and!vory, 'c( +he two last 3though most )ostly, and +aing to a common 2ye4

are the worst(- Hmy italicsI. 6learly )ace is implying that the use ofebony and ivory is financial and visual in motivation.

/earsay and anecdotal speculation are as common as mystification in theworld of luthierie. @hat is clearly necessary is a scientific means to testpotential materials. The results can then be compared with the moresubJective evaluations.

The four main obJective criteria for identifying the acoustic suitability of a


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proposed material are#

3. the speed of sound within the material?. the characteristic impedance

1. the sound radiation coefficient9. the loss coefficient

+he speed o sound5

The speed, c, with which sound travels through a material, is defined as theroot of the materialKs DoungKs modulus, E, divided by the materialKsdensity,d#

c L M ECd

+he characteristic imped a nce 5

This means how much sound pressure is generated by the vibration ofmolecules at a given frequency. This is related to a material's speed ofsound and it's density#

0 L cd L M Ed+he sound radiation coeicient5

The average loudness. This is a ratio of a material's speed of sound to itsdensity#

R L cCd L M ECd1

+he loss coeicient5

This is the degree to which a material dissipates vibrational energy due to

internal friction$ in other words damping#


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N L 3CO L PCQ L tan

/ere O is the quality factor, P is the logarithmic decrement, and the lossangle.

%s we can see the first three equations can all be expressed in terms ofspeed of sound and density. The density can be easily calculated bydividing the volume by the mass. &n 3451 a luthier and archetier called>ucchi designed a device for measuring the time taen for a soundwave totravel through a material. The internal damping of a material is muchmore complex.

The following graphs reproduced from *lrie G.


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The above graph demonstrates that DoungKs modulus and density arealmost linearly correlated.

Below we can see how some tonewoods compare in speed of sound and

density#

%nd finally a comparison of elasticity and damping#


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Possible alternatives to ebony "in#erboards

*lrie G.


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wear, it will require colouring again.

itric acid umed boxwood ingerboard


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*oxwood ingerboard on inished iddle

% local timber worthy of consideration is laburnum. @idely planted for


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its beautiful yellow flowers, it grows all over Europe and through theBalans. /istorically it was used for /ighland bagpipes and recordersbefore availability of tropical hardwoods. The heartwood is dar brown,and darens considerably more with age. +ot requiring staining maes it

much more desirable from the luthier's perspective.!onclusion

There are many possible alternative materials at the disposal of a luthierconcerned about the future of his planet and craft. @e must continue toexperiment and innovate, and to question which traditions- to conserveand which to reJect given current nowledge and dwindling supply. )anyspecies have been harvested to extinction. @e are players in this game andour decisions will have implications for future generations. ften luthiersshift the responsibility on the client# &'m only delivering what the clientdemands.- upply ends only with extinction, so we simply cannot waituntil we are no longer able to obtain the traditional- materials, then startlooing for the alternatives. @e must present the alternatives so that theclients, better informed, demand them.

Acnowledgement5 ! am greatly indebted to the ollowing paper or the

graphs and e.uations5

American Journal o *otany 7831945 1:87;1::>? ># @>?- L#!B2 C( B( =2C@+

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Sustainable Luthierie_ a Pioneer's Guide