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It's a lot easier to find highest density Sitka, that's for sure. I think mybrecord was 5.5 for bear claw...

Al Carruth wrote:
" I'm pretty sure that those dense tops I got were actually Red spruce, and very good quality..."

I wouldn't be surprised if they -were- Engelmann. Some of the "A" grade tops I've bought are heavy and dense and look more like red than Engelmann. They generally go on instruments that I think people will beat on because they seem to have more headroom than the paper white stuff of the "higher grades" (AAA) I have. I think there is more variability in Engelmann than in other species of spruces, so if you pick the right piece I think you can build anything with Engelmann.

Low density Sitka exists, but it's not common. Look at the relationship between the late wood and early wood line widths: not the grain count per inch, but the proportions. Late wood in softwoods adds stiffness along the grain, but it adds mass even faster. Wood from higher up in the tree will tend to have narrower late wood lines, and be relatively low in density, according to a local tone wood supplier who has cut lots of red spruce over the years. 'Higher up' is a relative thing, of course, those Sitka trees can get pretty tall! Sometimes the really low density stuff will have noticeably wider grain spacing, a lower count per inch, than the denser stuff. Don't disdain it so long as the cross grain stiffness is decent. So far as I can find out cross stiffness mostly relates to how well quartered the wood is, with no significant correlation I can see to grain count.

Alan, You nailed it well! I actually have sitka that has a density of over 9 grams/cu.in and some other that is under 6 gm/cu. in. And everything in between. There is that rare pc of sitka that one can cut off VG by quite a bit, and it’s still stiff as glass. Soundboards are our only business, so as we cut and maximize recovery of target product, we are checking stiffness continually, to determine when a correction wedge needs to be cut to get back to the sweet orrientation. Of coarse we want that correction wedge to be a product as well. Sometimes it’s an area of a block that will be a mandolin/octave front if there is a knot at one end of the block.. other times an archtop guitar front.. and other times maybe a bracewood stick.. But the point is orientation of cut has more to do with stiffness than the amount of cellulose in a years growth; wide grain/close grain. More open loose grain can have a lower density, but it’s not a sure bet. We have seen some suprizingly dense wood with very loose texture.

Hmm, what's that in metric, lol!

Well it's half metric (grams)

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

So if a cubic inch is 16.3871 cc, I get .549g/cm3 - .366g/cm3, which would definitely fall to the extremes I've seen as well, though once long ago I had some lutz at .32...