Whatever turns you on, as long as the wood has been properly dried before construction...
One fairly recent consideration is about the use of rosewood, (according to a recent NPR feature) as it has been getting scarce from S India, where some countries will not allow import, or even parts of guitars or other musical instruments, pens, etc will be held at customs due to the ban, so might be a travel no/no...
Any wood is good if properly sealed...
Steve K
Drew (other than me) - there are quite a few high silica hardwoods which eat up carbide. Some also have nasty resins to defeat bugs, fungi, and woodworkers who forget to wear dust masks! And now there are actually some farmed hybrid hardwoods which combine desirable characteristics and spare endangered forests. I have some "Lyptus" in the shop which resembles mahogany but is far stronger and heavier. And it's high silica. But it loses the beauty contest to the genuine Honduras mahogany I have in the adjacent bin, given to me leftover from a major high-end remodel. But for a camera, don't forget alder, the poor man's cherry. Machines well and just needs some stain.
As I have heard, the silica comes from growing in sandy soil, where the tree absorbs the microsilica...Originally Posted by Drew Wiley
Steve K
I suppose it is possible that some sand becomes ingested through the bark, but the reason for unusual mineral content is a combination of plant genetics and good old fashioned Darwin "survival of the fittest"; that is, those that develop natural fungi- and pesticides. This has been covered in lots of earlier threads, but the great majority of commercial timbers available to-day are plantation trees. This often means they have identical genetic origins. Selection is based on quick growth and suitability for "general" timber work - economic reasons. When mahogany and other trees were harvested from wild, there was much more variation in the growth, figuring and colour - even between trees which had grown up next to each other.
I might be tempted to hang around the auction showrooms, with an eye to hundred-year-old chests of drawers... that's probably pretty stable wood, by now.
Neil
Wasn't that the stuff Brian May (and his dad) made his guitars out of (old fireplace mantles, etc)???
When some old wood really hardens up, it can be difficult to cut (and dangerous!!!)...
Don't chop up good furniture, but maybe try a architectural salvage place to see if they have anything suitable...
Newer wood might behave better for precision cutting
Steve K
That's an excellent idea. I am using some mahogany from an old table, for the neck of a Classical guitar that I am building at the moment. It is wonderful stuff, genuine Central American mahogany top quality. You simply can't get this from timber yards, where they call all kinds of wood "mahogany", now the real stuff isn't generally available.
Someone asked why mahogany was used for old cameras. It is partly because it is one of the most stable woods, i.e. it doesn't shrink or expand very much when the air goes dry or damp. So intricate sliding parts don't go loose or jam up. It is also very nice to work with. And it is what cabinet makers-who made the first cameras, in the UK anyway- were using at the time cameras were invented.
Regarding teak, some UK camera manufacturers made a teak model, specifically for people who were going off to India, teak being more resistant to insect attack.
For most of the woods being discussed here, the way the wood is cut from the tree is more important than the actual wood species. Radially cut wood ("quarter sawn" ) is more stable than flat sawn. And fancy grain may look pretty, but straight-grained wood is more rigid, and much easier to work if you are making your own camera with, maybe, fairly limited skills.
Alan
?????
Really?
Alan
Wista makes/made their 45 cameras from: cherry wood; rosewood; ebony and quince wood. Not just checking rosewood.
An interesting aside: I was recently in Japan, looking at some of the old shrines and temple structures, and staying with my son who was doing some research on traditional tools and methods of the temple carpenters. One book (translated into English) had some interesting graphs showing the changes cut wood undergoes over time and how it differs in the species used in temple structures (mostly soft woods...ceder, but also what looked to be a cousin of the California laurel or Oregon myrtle). For example, compression strength increases (at the cost of increased brittleness) at different rates in different species. Since some of these structures have been standing for 4 or more centuries, I appreciated the long-view of wood selection that went into these structures.
I imagine that hard woods could undergo structural changes over a period of 100 years or more (if one is talking old furniture) that would make working the wood very different than freshly dried wood.
"Landscapes exist in the material world yet soar in the realms of the spirit..." Tsung Ping, 5th Century China
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