Official Luthiers Forum!

Found this posted on the Warmoth forum....

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 151829.htm

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Eeesh....I can't imagine thickness planing that stuff

I saw another article on that yesterday. The material they have come up with is said to be much stiffer than normal wood, and also denser. It turns out that, at least as a soundboard material, the added stiffness does not compensate for the extra density: a top made of this stuff would probably be heavier than a spruce top. Basically, what they're doing is squeezing the air out of the wood. We use softwoods for tops precisely because there's more air in the structure than in most hardwoods. This makes them stiffer for the weight. This might be useful as a B&S material, but I think it would be hard to sell. As a structural material, substituting for steel, it might have a future.

" Does the world need a bulletproof guitar?"

The way some people play..... They might!

Great, just what we need...another reason to chop down the rainforest.

I think what they're trying to do here is make use of some fast-growing woods that are currently of low value because they're not seen as useful in construction and are not 'fancy' enough for 'higher' uses.

As an example, we just had three very large poplar trees taken down. They were a fast-growing variety that put on an inch or more in diameter per year. They had quickly gotten over-large, and were becoming a hazard, with branches dying and falling off. The wood is soft, low in density, not strong, nor very attractive. It's not good fire wood, is not used in construction or furniture, and the only uses we can find are for growing mushrooms and chipping into mulch. If it could be turned into a construction material that would be less wasteful.

Of course, whole forests of trees like that being grown for construction, or pulp or 'bio-fuel', are not a great thing either. Still, recycling the material into something that will be useful, and will last for a bit longer than a paper bag, would help. The longer you can use this stiff, the less of it we'll need to cut down, and using wood, which is at least potentially renewable, is better than using something that is not.

I agree with Alan. From the article: "Softwoods like pine or balsa, which grow fast and are more environmentally friendly, could replace slower-growing but denser woods like teak in furniture or buildings ..."

Sadly, it seems a bulletproof student model may not be a bad idea. :-(

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George :-)

Of course, I would argue that this statement from the article is absolutely wrong-headed in many ways. Environmentally friendly? Got any proof? Perhaps I'm ignorant - but I can think of few buildings made of teak. Boat decks, yes - furniture, yes.


And I agree with Alan about poplar being used for mulch... After all, Leo made a bunch of Mustangs and Musicmasters out of the stuff. They were about as musical as mulch.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Let me rephrase it here:

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-oxygen-trees-make-1343498

I'm obviously not talking about cutting down the poplar in your backyard.