Yew as soundboard wood

[YvonneB]

Can I impose on the generosity of all you experienced people out there - I understand yew is a softwood so would it be suitable as a soundboard? Anyone got any experience of using it this way?

I am thinking of using it in conjunction with ovangcole back and sides.

I have one yew back/front plate and a set of sides - would I be better making an instrument with yew back/sides and spruce top or do you think the ovangcole back/sides with yew top would be better. The yew is nice straight grained stuff, from a tree that blew over back in the storms we had in '87, in a Suffolk churchyard. So I dont want to waste it.

I'll confess now that this is a ukulele I'm making ....:whistling: but I hope the same principles apply.

Happy New Year to all on here,

YB

[Paul Hostetter]

It should work fine, but very few people have ever had a chance to use it. It's very hard to come by. I reckon it'll be about voicing as you go along, it's not going to perform like spruce. But you'll never know until you try it. Let us know what happens.

[Ryk]

All things luthierie (sp?) i bow to Paul.

But yew of sufficient grain to be thought of for a musical instrument soundboard would provide superb staves for a bowyer as well. Seeing as how you are from the Sceptred Isle you may want to try it yourself or pass on some of your good fortune.

Just a thought,

Ryk

[Charles E.]

All things luthierie (sp?) i bow to Paul.

But yew of sufficient grain to be thought of for a musical instrument soundboard would provide superb staves for a bowyer as well. Seeing as how you are from the Sceptred Isle you may want to try it yourself or pass on some of your good fortune.

Just a thought,

Ryk

Bowyer?:confused: what sort of instrument is that? Had to look it up.... ah, of course, the English Long Bow. I think a hand carved Yew wood bow would be a beautiful thing indeed.

[Ryk]

Oh Charley .....

To a traditional archer ...... an English Yew longbow is a thing of dreams. Kind of like finding a Loar in your grandparents' attic. A delight.

Ryk

[Jean Fugal]

O K ... I know a feller that has a bunch of Yew cut and air dried. I am wondering if it would make suitable backs and sides. Or tops. Necks?
What do they mean when they say it is a hard softwood? Some of it is quite pretty.

[John Arnold]

What do they mean when they say it is a hard softwood?
The term 'softwood' is generally used to denote conifers, rather than the actual hardness of the wood. For example, pine can be quite soft (sugar pine) or very hard (longleaf heart pine).

[GD Armstrong]

Yew is one of the traditional woods used for lute bowls coupled with a spruce top. I've made a parlor guitar using Pacific Yew for the back & sides with Port Orford Cedar top - very bright treble sound. I've also used it for lap dulcimers.

[YvonneB]

Thanks for the input - Im still unsure what to do. The plate I have is ready joined and is a nice looking piece of wood, but it has a dull sound when tapped, even though it needs further thinning. My only previous experience is of a mahogany top and that sounded better even when double the final thicknes. I know it is used for lute backs, but that's a different function. It has a couple of tiny knots - I m not sure sound board is a good use for it. I may use it as back and sides for another instrument, or even as a thick veneer for something non musical.

[Spruce]

Yew has some serious mojo going for it...

But living in England, YvonneB, yew must have known that... ;)

There are just so many cool yew trees in England growing in the most interesting places...

I remember one Druid processional of about 15 trees that overlooks the church site where Christiananity was introduced to England...

Those trees were there way before the church was built, watched the whole thing go down including the ruin of the building, and are still there on the hillside watching....
And they are not even marked on the tour leaflet.... :disbelief:

Serious mojo indeed...

And yeah, I couldn't think of a better choice of wood for an uke...

It's harder than typical softwoods, but it'll work fine...

Love to see some pics when you're done....



I have one yew back/front plate and a set of sides - would I be better making an instrument with yew back/sides and spruce top or do you think the ovangcole back/sides with yew top would be better.

I'd go for the former...

If you need more yew wood, you might check John Boddy's up in Yorkshire...
He had some nice stuff the last time I was there...

[sprucetop1]

Well, I collected some large branches of yew back in 1987 after that major storm here in the UK. This tree was also in a churchyard and was many centuries old. I made a small jewellery box with it shown in the pic. The workmanship is a bit rough, (it was a very early project), but the pic shows the colour of the timber. I turned a bowl also (in 1988) and show that too. I think it would make a great wood for back and sides of a uke, or a mandolin if you can find pieces large enough without checks and flaws.

[fishtownmike]

There has also been a serious look at this trees bark for the benefit of a cure for specific cancers and the AIDS virus.

[whistler]

I'm surprised that people think Yew would be suitable as a soundboard wood, as it is much denser and harder than many hardwoods; it is comparable to Indian rosewood in these respects. Only recently, there was a thread about using cherry - typically quite a bit lighter and softer than yew - where is was deemed unsuitable as a soundboard wood (although, admittedly, this was on account of its stiffness, not its density or hardness).

I am not disputing the suitability of yew for soundboards - I have never made, played, heard, seen nor heard of an instrument with a yew soundboard. But perhaps I need to revise my ideas about
what makes a good soundboard wood. I would imagine that, being such a dense wood, it would need to be treated quite differently from spruce, cedar, redwood etc. Would it need to be planed extra thin? Or is its flexibility and springiness more important than its density?

[whistler]

BTW I have some nice English (or is it Scottish?) yew waiting to be cut up for backs and sides. I hadn't considered using it for tops as well.

[Spruce]

Here's a yew I'm gonna mill up one of these days....

The folks who had it in their front yard took it out because "it's too messy"...

What I'd give to have a yew of that size in my front yard...

[Paul Hostetter]

I'm surprised that people think Yew would be suitable as a soundboard wood, as it is much denser and harder than many hardwoods

People make instrument tops out of koa, walnut and padauk with really good success—not to mention sides, backs and necks. I've never used yew for a top but I've handled enough of it to think it's well worth a try. Making it really thin could result in a banjo-like tone in a larger instrument, but in the case of ukes, really thin generally works best.

[John Morton]

Many years ago I cut a yew, whatever kind that is which grows amongst the forest trees in British Columbia. It was in dense forest near the river some distance from my place. I wanted the largest possible piece, so I bucked off a 3 ft. length of the lower trunk, 10 in. diameter, figuring that was about as big a chunk as two people could carry. It took many tries to get it onto our shoulders, and then we had to walk perfectly in step.

This was miserable, so we made our way over to the river, figuring we would just float it downstream. Not surprisingly, it was considerably heavier than water. We made a rope harness and waded along while supporting the log.

As with all BC yew that I've seen, this tree had radically spiral grain, and I believe it all ended up as small carved and turned objects.

John

[Woody Turner]

The principal reason for yew's suitability for archery is its elasticity, commonly measured as Young's modulus (E). Interestingly, yew and spruce have similar E values , even though yew is much denser (see http://www.springerlink.com/content/t6784475g0165l23/). For a discussion of this subject relative to ukes, look at the chart at http://www.ukuleles.com/Technology/woodprop.html for a listing of E values for various wood species. Note that two kinds of spruce, western red cedar, koa, and butternut (hmmm...) have less stiffness (lower chart values) than the rest. So maybe yew would work as a top.

BTW, in my occasional work with yew (Pacific and English), I've always been disappointed that the rose colors in the green wood disappear during drying and finishing. I still like the appearance of the finished material. Here's a vase from a large (for the eastern U.S.) yew tree.

[YvonneB]

Thanks all.

You've got me thinking about making a longbow now - as if making instruments wasn't enough of an addiction.

I think I'll keep the yew for back and sides and put a spruce top on my ovangcole uke. Ive got some spruce from ebay where someone started carving an F syle and messed it up - plenty of wood left for a flat top so I'll just have to get planing!

[Spruce]

You've got me thinking about making a longbow now - as if making instruments wasn't enough of an addiction.



That's a really tough piece of wood to come up with....

I remember back in the Taxol days, when the drug companies put a bounty out on yew trees in order to obtain their bark for cancer cures...
(Taxol has since been synthesized).

I remember looking at mountains of yew logs that were being pressure washed to remove the bark, so I had a chance to pick the cream of the crop for lutes and archery bows...

What a mistake...

Both lute makers and bow makers are the pickiest persons imaginable about their raw material....
Way more picky than any mandolin maker I know... ;)

The wood had to be perfect for 36", with no pinknots or even a slight waviness to the grain, even grain spacing, even color of the heartwood, etc. etc.

And, it had to have the sapwood intact and not taking up more than 1/4" of the finished blank...

That picture of the yew I posted is typical with it's undulating shape (rarely a nice round tree) and irregular graining...

So-ooo, all that choice wood I brought home to mill wound up in my outhouse and it this wainscoating in my office...

http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee22/e_stamp/P1040287.jpg