35
by CDFingers
I was working on this today. Milling it. Now, recall that this is split, so all the fibers are intact along the length of this blank. So I'm using a nice cross cut saw, right, across the grain, and the blank is supported at two points, the two halves of log that resulted from a neighbor's falling my other pecan for me. As I cut, a huge resonance came from the blank. Hear me out.
I worked for nine years as a tracker organ builder, building two organs in the 17th century style, on site, using period tools and techniques. When we made the wooden resonators for the large reed pipes, the walls of said four sided pipes were tapered, so as to provide the most superior resonance. Point is, my ear is tuned to wood in this way.
Splitting along the existing pathways keeps the timbre intact. There are no dead ends where vibrations travel along a fiber and zoof off into space without exciting the entire piece of wood. Waste of potential acoustic energy. Splitting the blank along the grain preserves the integrity of the wood, I think, in a way that will give me a lighter, quicker bow because it will require less mass to achieve superior vibrations. Superior vibrations are efficient, so less wood mass will deliver performance of other bows not so split. Very resonant piece of wood here.
This piece is about as tall as I am. I can see the line of heart wood right down the middle. I will try to leave as much of that as I can, taking off the younger wood. The younger wood can take stretching so doesn't store as much energy per unit of mass, whereas the older wood compresses, stores, then releases energy. If the whole bow were old wood, it'd break. If the whole bow were young wood, it'd last about forty seven shots, when it would stay bent. A balance is struck. I'm guessing it'll take more than one bow on my part.
And that is how things stand.
CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack