YES , ITS THE SAME PHOTO AS YESTERDAY, but last night I was looking at it on my Ipad and I magnified it by spreading my fingers on the touch screen. A revelation hit, It was really easy to count the growth rings on the cedar tonewood I had been using as background. Much easier than counting growth rings using a magnifying glass as I have been doing.
To prove my point I carefully counted the rings that bisect the business card. I am sure there are exactly 175 of them. The card is 3.5 inches long.
*that means it took the tree 175 years to grow the length of the business card, Wow!
*that means this wood has 50 growth rings per inch, Wow! is that master-grade cedar? you bet!
*that means that the 4 foot diameter log I cut this from fifty years ago was mighty old. If the log was 48 inches in
and each inch took 50 years that tree was 2,400 years old when it was felled. The early years probably saw faster
growth so knock off 500 years to be conservative. It was still 1,900 years old when logged. It was used in the
Larson Mill log boom and probably cut from the slopes around Lake Whatcom when the mill was built in 1907.
I have had it for fifty years, I think it reasonable to say that ukulele top is 2,000 years old.
*HOW WONDERFUL IS WOOD, 2,000 YEARS OLD AND STILL SOLID AND SINGING!
To prove my point I carefully counted the rings that bisect the business card. I am sure there are exactly 175 of them. The card is 3.5 inches long.
*that means it took the tree 175 years to grow the length of the business card, Wow!
*that means this wood has 50 growth rings per inch, Wow! is that master-grade cedar? you bet!
*that means that the 4 foot diameter log I cut this from fifty years ago was mighty old. If the log was 48 inches in
and each inch took 50 years that tree was 2,400 years old when it was felled. The early years probably saw faster
growth so knock off 500 years to be conservative. It was still 1,900 years old when logged. It was used in the
Larson Mill log boom and probably cut from the slopes around Lake Whatcom when the mill was built in 1907.
I have had it for fifty years, I think it reasonable to say that ukulele top is 2,000 years old.
*HOW WONDERFUL IS WOOD, 2,000 YEARS OLD AND STILL SOLID AND SINGING!
ANOTHER REVELATION struck last night. If you look at the wood closely you will see the medullary rays running vertically up the photo at 90 degrees from the direction of the growth rings. These rays are the cells that allow for the transfer of sap up and down a tree. They are only visible in wood that has been perfectly quarter-sawn as this piece was by my friends at Pacific Rim Tonewoods.
