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Maestro Stefano
Conia Il “Giovane” builds his instruments using
the classic lutherie tradition woods , selecting personally
the best suited and seasoned materials. This allows to obtain
outstanding aesthetic and acoustic results. Woods used for violin
building are: Maple for the back, neck, ribs and bridge. Ebony
for the fingerboard, pegs and tailpiece. And finally the king
of woods, which has made possible the masterworks of luthiers
in all times: Spruce. |
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Spruce wood
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Spruce,
which is available in most regions of Europe, above all in mountain
zones, is a versatile, strong and elastic wood. This makes it
a widely used material, from house building to lutherie.The
particular spruce variety used since Amati times to build violins
has the taxonomic name of “Picea abies excelsa”,
more commonly named “Red Spruce”, or “Resonance
Spruce”. |
This exceptional tree grows between 1000 and 2300 meters of elevation.
It can reach 30-40 meters of height. The red spruce has a very good
natural habitat in the northern Italian region named Trentino, more
precisely in the beautiful forest located into the valley of Paneveggio;
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and in this
forest, today as 400 years ago, luthiers from all over the world
come to choose their wood. Tales are about the great Antonio
Stradivari wandering about Paneveggio forest to select the best
trees to use for violin making. This author, thanks to ice ages
interesting continental Europe between 17th and 18th century,
was able to use an exceptional wood quality. |
Paneveggio Forest
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Cold climate in fact slows growth of trees, which develop narrow and
regular annual growth rings. This develops a straight wood fiber with
high density.
Seasoning
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Resonance
spruce is used to build the harmonic tables due to its enormous
elasticity which allows an efficient transmission of sound
waves and for its honeycomb fiber structure. Lymphatic channels
are in fact like small organ pipes and they amplify sound
waves.
This is
the reason for the “Resonance”
name.
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After
tree cut, naturally between October and November with waning moon,
period in which lymphatic channels are empty, trunks are washed into
water and afterwards seasoned in a dry place for a minimum of ten
years.
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Notable importance
has the way of cutting the trunks; cut has to be radial and
not tangential , to exploit properly the wood fiber.Tangential
cut in fact deprives wood of part of its natural brightness
and reduces its resistance and vibration capability. |
Tangent and radial cuts
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Maple tree
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If
spruce is responsible for the sound, maple makes the beauty
of a violin.
Maple
commonly used in lutherie comes mainly from the Balkans, even
though other species of the same family are present in all
of the Northern Hemisphere and their taxonomic name is “Pseudoplatanus”.
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This particular
wood has an ondulated fiber, which once worked and polished
shows all of its beauty producing clear and dark streaks very
similar to sea waves.
This gives
the name of "flamed maple". This wood is difficult
to find, only a tree in a thousand has the "flamed"
appearance, and its cost is quite high.
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'Flamed' maple
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More
difficult to find yet is the "Bird's Eye" maple,
where fiber disposition is not streaked, but forms small dark
circular eye-like figures. In old times there existed examples
of backs built with alternative materials like poplar and
beech.
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'Bird's Eye' maple
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This was motivated
more by difficulties in finding maple than by luthiers wanting to
experiment with new woods.
| Ebony
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Lastly,
ebony. It can be found in India, Madagascar and Martinique,
is very slow growing and is very dark or black colored. Its
density is very high, it's in fact one of the few woods which
do not float on water. Very hard and brittle, it's used for
fingerboards, pegs and tailpieces, the most wear-subjected parts. |
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As an alternative
for making tailpieces and pegs it's possible to use boxwood,
which has similar characteristics to ebony, but a clear colour.
Some builders have recently started to make Pernambuco tailpieces.
It's a wood coming from Brazil and is traditionally used, with
excellent results, to build stringed instruments bows.
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Ebony pores: microscope view
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