Wood used for
musical instrument needs to meet certain physical and acoustical
properties and not all wood species are suitable as tonewoods. While
guitars are often made from various (indigenous) wood species,
violins worldwide are made from imported Spruce for the front plate
and Maple for the back plate. This wood tends to be slow grown, very
old and is typically dried naturally for up to 50 years. In a
research project of the past two years we characterised various
indigenous (South) African wood species and determined how they fit
into different classification schemes to determine the suitability of
the wood to be used as tonewood.
Four species gave promising results: Yellowwood and Blackwood for the
front and Sapele and Hardpear for the back. None of these were,
however, several decades old, or dried. The wood was carefully
handpicked and kiln dried to obtain the best possible raw material.
The first violin was made from Yellowwood and Sapele by Hannes Jacobs
in Pretoria - one of the best luthiers in South Africa - and the
sound compares very well with his traditional instruments.
The process of making of the African violin and its sound
can be seen / heard under:
https://youtu.be/tKvrhbI04wk
The
second
violin will be made in our Department
as part of various student projects and a local luthier will assist
with the final finetuning and the assembly. For more information
contact Prof.
Martina Meincken at mmein@sun.ac.za
at the Department
of Forest and Wood Science or
visit:
www.sun.ac.za/forestry