Although I haven't yet been able to determine the species of the old wood (guesses welcome), it is a medium soft, coniferous wood along the lines of pine or cedar. The wood is so old that the only smell I get is "old".. It has a beautiful tap tone, with a deep fundamental, and an overtone that rings a fifth higher- very lively, but deep and mellow- not as harsh as a hardwood like ash or maple. My concern is it could wind up too mellow if I made the core from the same wood, and not have any "spank". I chose to use ash for the core, for a couple of reasons.. The ash will add stability and strength, as well as giving more "teeth" to the tone of the instrument. We don't want anything wimpy- just a nice, sweet tone- with a capability of some edgy highs..
I took a rough ash timber with some spalting and started slicing and dicing it up
cut a couple of lengths
Check out the end grain on this stuff.. Should be really cool with the old barnwood.
Anyway, I started paring the timbers down to get them to a usable dimension, while preserving the symmetry of the end grain.. took a while-
