uke construction - aged wood

Greetings pickers, I was cruising some uke makers web sites and noticed that one luthier advertised that his uke was made with 40 year old wood, which got me to thinking about how ukes are made. For example, is it typical to use aged wood because I haven't seen this mentioned much on seller's web sites? Do the K brands use aged koa or are they using new koa. I've also wondered how unusual woods will age and if the ukes will age well (e.g., mango, zebrawood, acacia, Oregon myrtle (same as CA bay laurel IIRC) because my guess is there aren't very many old instruments made out of these woods to use as indicators. Any comments on wood and uke construction appreciated. cheers, g2

Aged wood is typically more stable because the moisture content has settled with its environment. Keep in mind that the moisture content can vary. If you take an older uke to Hawaii and live there for several years, then you move to Arizona, you could still have problems with it potentially cracking from dry conditions. It is best for the solid-wood acoustic instrument to be in about 50 percent relative humidity throughout its life-time.

The key thing I'd like to know is how was the wood used. I saw one person who proudly claimed to use wooden fence from his mother's home that had been aged xxx years. From what (little) I've learnt recently, it's ideal if, once starch has been dried and evacuated, so to speak, from the wood, there is still resin left to better "teach" the instrument.

The luthier who made my uke explained to me that, for example, many people today hunt for 20s and 30s guitars like Martins. But back then, most people only strummed open chords up near the headstock and little of the guitars capabilities were explored. As you play, the vibrations of the note(s) excite different parts of the soundboard/top. As it vibrates, it causes heat (albeit very little). If you only use a limited part of the musical spectrum, only part of the uke's top gets "taught". So when people buy these old Martins, they find that they don't sound nearly as good as they'd expected, often because of this reason.

By being this old, it can still somewhat be "taught" by playing a richer array of notes, but the wood is now set in a number of ways.

Just as I'm playing my brand new ukulele, sometimes when I play certain notes the smell of freshly cut wood comes out of it and I get a whiff... he explained that those are parts of the instrument that haven't been accessed much. Muscles it's not used yet, as it were.

If the wood is super dry and the resin's already fully crystallized, it will give the instrument a set character of sorts.

I'm not sure I explained this well, and I'm going by what I've been told by three people (who all had the same explanation). Either this will help or someone more knowledgeable will come out, correct me and we'll be all the wiser for it!

I took classical guitar a long time ago (for a little while) and the music teacher said you could put the guitar next to a speaker to let the vibrations affect the wood lol.. So park your uke next to your speakers?

I know for tops made of cedar/redwood/spruce that older woods are often said to be better than fresher woods. If you've ever looked at an old guitar or stringed instrument, you may be able to see that the grain has become more pronounced and you can feel the ridges. So there are definitely changes that happen over time. I'm not sure of the scientific reasons why this would improve sound.

Given that it has been stored properly, there is no difference between 100 year old wood and 5 year old wood. Once the moisture has been removed to a proper working level (somewhere around 6% to 8%) and the wood is stable, it's ready to work with. Under passive conditions this could take a few to several years to accomplish. More aggressive approaches use kilns and other means to force the drying process but this can stress the wood.
Most of my koa is about 25 years old. It is no better or worse than the 5 year old koa I have.
The real advantage though to having older (as long as it's been well cared for) is that it could be of higher quality (stiffer grain, nicer figure) than what's available today. And you can bet it was cheaper.

1. Stability (like Pippin said.) Wood should always be appropriately dried before use. New wood can be kiln dried, but many people think air dried is better. I also like my wood to be quarter sawn and have tight grain because it is generally more stable. Old growth trees are larger, this is important when you want a well quartered piece of wood.

2. Beauty. Its becoming increasingly difficult to find well quartered and/or highly figured wood in certain species like Koa and Brazilian. A lot of the old growth stuff simply looks better. tight grain, tight figure , spiderwebbing, proper coloring, etc.

3. Tone. Many builders believe old growth wood sounds better than new wood......this is debatable.

4. Marketing hype. Each component of an instrument is important, but they are often exaggerated by luthiers to sell instruments. I'm a luthier, should i be telling you this....lol.

Then there's old growth like Chuck mentioned....tighter closer slower growing grain....

There are lots of people that believe old growth is better because the wood has matured a lot. Newer growth, especially in modern re-forestation projects has a faster growth rate, less dense grain and more heart-wood. Trees are harvested at smaller diameters and that cuts down on the amount of good quarter-sawn timber.

According to some pretty solid research by Al Carruth among others, wood slowly loses "hemicellulose" with age, and that this loss involves losing weight faster than losing stiffness and strength (which it loses as well). This "improves" the stiffness to weight ratio, and as long as the strength and stiffness (which are indeed two separate issues) remain sufficient for the structural integrity of the instrument, you can therefore expect responsiveness to improve.

Oily woods like the rosewoods get stiffer with age as the oils harden, and this may offset the loss of hemicellulose.

Oleo-resinous softwoods like spruce, cedar, and redwood will also change as the sap resins harden with age, and they will become lighter in weight as the volatile components of oils and resins evaporate.

The bottom line? We don't know enough yet, though we do know that wood changes with age whether it's been made into an instrument and vibrated or not. There are very plausible explanations for the empirical evidence of instruments changing as they are played or even artificially vibrated, and they likely change even if not played.

And none of this even gets into the issue of certain kinds of finishes changing with age...shellac, varnish, and nitro lacquer in particular.

maclay said:

1. Stability (like Pippin said.) 4. Marketing hype. Each component of an instrument is important, but they are often exaggerated by luthiers to sell instruments. I'm a luthier, should i be telling you this....lol.

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Jake, come on! great.... now the secret is out.

I think I'd have to agree with Rick. Obviously every piece of wood is different, but I do seem to notice differences in older wood and I have always felt the the long term drying happens on a cellular level when the oils are crystalizes, making it more resonant.

DeVineGuitars said:

Jake, come on! great.... now the secret is out.

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Yeah, sorry Eric. I ruined it for all of us.

You're talking about two different things here. The OP was talking about wood that's at rest, waiting to be an uke, rather than an ukulele that is assembled from wooden pieces and is played and ages as an ukulele and everything else that relates to the finished instrument.

People also want things that are rare or things they can't have. If we ever switch to a new drying method, people will look back at today's instruments and say, "Those instruments made from kiln dried wood were great. Those were the days." We always look back at the bygone era, and think things were so much better.

In general I think old growth wood is superior and if I have a choice, that's what I use. Having said that, there is nothing wrong with newer timber, and a lot of wonderful instruments are being made with it.

maclay said:

People also want things that are rare or things they can't have. If we ever switch to a new drying method, people will look back at today's instruments and say, "Those instruments made from kiln dried wood were great. Those were the days." We always look back at the bygone era, and think things were so much better.

In general I think old growth wood is superior and if I have a choice, that's what I use. Having said that, there is nothing wrong with newer timber, and a lot of wonderful instruments are being made with it.

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There is still a lot of air-dried lumber available. There are mills all over Eastern USA with air-dried lumber that specialize in hard woods. None have large surplus, but I know several in Eastern Pennsylvania, alone.

Technically on topic: I've got some nice old growth redwood (cut quite some time ago), some newer, but similar grain (cut five years ago), and one sinker redwood top that is both very old and, for the better part of a century, very wet...about 9% now. I would not recognize it as related to my other redwood tops....it looks and feels more like close grained Morado...beautiful warm sound but probably more transformed by the under water processes. How does age play into this? A couple of weeks in the hot tub , minimum of ten, twenty, fifty years? Comparisons from you pros?

Chuck, I believe that my post exactly related to the OP issue of whether old wood is different from newly cut and dried wood. It is different, and at least some of those differences are scientifically observable, not just empirically.

Whether that automatically translates into better instruments is a whole other issue, and is subject to great controversy, and rightly so.

And then there's the issue of whether the wood ages "better" being a part of a vibrating instrument. I would argue that it ages differently, often for the "better" (or should I say "bettah"?), but not necessarily so, and those changes are also related to the graduation of the plates and carving of braces.

I have seen and heard some contemporary instruments go all muddy and boomy because of being made too lightly in an attempt to simulate "vintage tone". This is more with larger guitars like Bluegrass dreads than with smaller instruments, but I do think that instruments can develop problematic "wolf tones" if graduated too thin.

Pippin said:

There is still a lot of air-dried lumber available. There are mills all over Eastern USA with air-dried lumber that specialize in hard woods. None have large surplus, but I know several in Eastern Pennsylvania, alone.

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Yes Pippin, you are correct. Air dried lumber is still available. In terms of rarity and hard to obtain wood, I'm talking more about straight grain Brazilian and nice fiddleback koa......stuff like that. You can still get some old growth stuff, but it's becoming scarce. And in terms of how wood gets cured, I was just having a little fun.

Wow, what great information and it's wonderful to hear from all the luthiers. Actually I asked several questions so everyone's been on topic. My questions related to all sorts of issues both pre-uke wood, and wood that's in ukes and how it ages and peripherally why and if older instruments (=older wood) always sounds better. So one thing I'm still curious about is this uke that I'm looking at made of 40 year old koa. Assuming that the wood has been treated properly, I'm hearing several things. First, that because the wood has aged already it may not have the tonal range after 10 years that younger wood might have, but at the same time I'm hearing that for structural reasons, old wood has greater range/tonal complexity than new wood. I know that this is oversimplifying and I'm not sure if I'm using the right terms, but it sounds contradictory. Or maybe wood is just too variable to generalize about. As an ecologist I'm somewhat familiar with the density differences in old trees vs. young trees which is mostly a matter of different environmental conditions/silvacultural practices. I'm still curious about the aging properties of instruments made of exotic and seemingly untried woods like zebrawood, mango, etc. Yeah they're pretty but what will they sound like 15 years from now. TIA, g2