Quarter or regular sawn ?

Building/Repair
#1

Hello Bachido !

I read Shamisen of Japan everyday for more than a week now , waiting to finally get to work on the shamisen making, but there is a big question and i can’t find any answer in the book .

In guitar making we need to use quarter sawn wood for several parts , and so i was wondering if it is the same in shamisen making or not ? For those who don’t know about quarter or regular sawn here is a picture :

http://www.amishhandcraftedheirlooms.com/images/quarter-sawn.jpg

Hope you have an answer it would save me some money and time when i’ll finally get on the construction :smiley:

#2

oo o:
will keep my ears listening for this ^^

#3

yep , you know what i mean when you see a beautiful piece of regular sawn wood , full of veins and colors and you know you can’t make a soundboard out of it … heartbreaking , so i hope we don’t need that much quarter sawn in shamisen.

#4

which would produce a better tone do you think?
both are quite beautiful, would be abit more expensive for regular sawn though… quarter would be better for mass produce i guess ^^ the other will be better for custom pieces.

#5

none of them , actually it’s about strengh , when you make a soundboard with regular sawn the wood grain is all flat so it’s softer and could break with strings tension , with quarter sawn , the wood grain is all stacked and so it’s harder and reacts way better to string tension , it’s the same as the skin top , it has to be strong enough not to brake and soft enough to resonate and produce a good sound , both can be good but one would brake easely.

Mass production use regular sawn , actually big mass production (ikea) use laminate or composite wood to make furnitures , even instruments can be make with these stuff , so it’s way cheaper , quarter sawn is a “rare” thing , almost only used in lutherie . When you want to make a beautiful looking table you want to use regular sawn , so you can see the wood veins and colors , indian rosewood quarter sawn looks quite generic , but when you use regular you can see some awesome stuff .

#6

oh ^.^ good to know :slight_smile:
will remember that.

#7

this is interesting, some veneers are quarter cut, not many i grant you, i’ve been looking at them for some bachi work.
anyone know the hardness of cherry wood? i can’t seem to find a scale…

#8

I talked about it with some friends and my teacher this week and they told me that because of the construction of this instrument i can use regular cut wood , so i’m happy with it.

About the cherry wood , i found a density scale , it says the density is from 0.6 to 0.8 .

#9

oo thanks

#10

you’re welcome :slight_smile:

#11

Wood is often sawn across grain to give it a better appearance (more grain. Structurally though you want the opposite, the growth rings should parallel the board from one end to the other.

Amanda,
There are many kinds of “cherry”. The northern hemisphere ones tend to be soft. But many of the South American cherries are rather hard. Here is a great link to Janka wood hardness for thousands of woods listed by both common and scientific names.

http://www.morlanwoodgifts.com/MM011.ASP?pageno=207

#12

hi there
yes i’ve just been perusing the janka scale and i was slightly confused there. it would be northern european cherry that i have a sample of.
very helpful thanks.

i have quite a few bits to go through still, but i know i have birch, mahogany and some oak off the top of my head (but then i’m not making the actual shamisen, just bachi so i only need smaller amounts)

#13

Here is another link for cherry wood information:
http://www.wood-database.com/lumber-identification/hardwoods/wild-cherry/

Another thing to consider for a bachi is they are typically weighted. I have been working on one in horn and ebony, but even ebony isn’t heavy enough for a jiuta shamisen bachi. The wooden bachi I have dissassembled typically have a fair amount of lead in them.

#14

thank you michael, apologies for hijacking your thread Florian!
(weighted…omg,going to have to wait for my oak one to arrive to play with and poke)

#15

don’t worry you’re both talking about very interesting stuff :smiley: !
About very heavy wood you might want to try Almond tree , i hold a piece of that wood recently and couldn’t believe how heavy it was !
But the problem is that it’s a very hard wood and apparently unstable , but it worth the try.

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