Spalted Oak Tenor (IW#100)



And instrument # 100 has rolled around!  Momentous.  True, many of the numbered instruments are canjos and experimental things, and true, many were reassembled into something else or have wandered off to do other stuff, but here we are at # 100 anyway.  Pretty cool.  And I could not be happier that it is this little number.

I wrote about the oak back posts on the Shaw Piano here and here.  This is a third instrument made from those.  When I started slabbing up the parts, however, I found that the wood was spalted.  "Spalt" is a general term used by wood workers to describe what happens when fungi start to break down a fallen tree.  They tend to move vertically along the growth rings, and can leave a variety of differently colored lines along the grain when the wood is dried and turned into lumber.  Some of these lines can be very dramatic and quite beautiful, and wood workers will often use spalt as a pretty breath-taking visual element in their work.  More about spalting here, and a nice gallery of spalted wooden objects from the same web site here.  So the lumber for this guitar is spalted oak, and though not as dramatic as some spalting, it is still pretty cool (I think).  It shows up as black lines on the back and sides.

This instrument is for ceramist Nathan Willever, who is a big supporter of the Craft School Experience, which made it so perfect that I had just enough of the sound board from the piano that sat in the common room at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts for several decades.  Sorry for all of the links.  They are all great sites though, and worth investigating.  I was tickled that I had enough of the soundboard to be able to include it in this instrument for him.

It sounds great.  The oak is really punchy and it is a really easy player.  Here is the video:


Comments