Quilted and Highly Flamed Maple

[Wesley]

I know that quilted maple and highly flamed maple are pretty to look at - and that can be a good enough reason to make a mandolin out of these woods - but what tonal differences if any can one expect to hear from them ?

Thanks in advance. I'm about to order an instrument and I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to pay for that upgrade.

[Magnus Geijer]

Short answer: None, really. The price difference between figured and non-figured lies in looks, slightly higher board price and peskier carving, not tone.

/Magnus

[SternART]

If I'm not mistaken quilted maple boards might be softer, and produce less aggressive tone than rock hard maple.

[Stephen Perry]

Quilted I've seen is all big leaf. Mellower softer wood.

[Dale Ludewig]

I think by and large, it's cosmetic. But really curly quilted bigleaf, if carved (or however else you do it- probably with abrasives) where you want it can have quite a bark. I've built three with one piece quilted backs from Spruce and they "rock". When the grain gets that wild, a builder must be careful or you'll blow it. Beyond calipers, I use halogen lights to see how things are looking. And bleed through on the initial dyeing in unavoidable, from my experience. I think it's proof that I've pushed it to the limit and it's still structurally strong.

Simple highly beautiful tight grained curly (ho- hum-) is still a bugger. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

I'm not sure how the highly figured woods fit into the equation (what equation?). People want it. You work it in. I do think this: highly figured wood is much more difficult to get to just the right graduations than less figured stuff.

[Scotti Adams]

..you mean like this

[Dale Ludewig]

Nice.

[Keith Newell]

I agree that I use the thickness gage and a light on that stuff. The figured stuff is hard to deal with the defined stripes of hard/soft wood. The quilted tends to bleed through a bit more and is softer. You can really see it when you scrape and sand and see the end grains pointing everywhich way. If Im not careful and dont "whisker" the wood I get patches of raised grain on the quilted.
The term "whisker" is an old one and means to use water in some form, even isopropal alcohol (30% water by definition) to raise the open ends of grain so you can then scrape them off flush with the wood.
I have purchased a bunch of Big leaf heavy figured wood from Old Standard woods that is extremely hard, hardest wood I have worked with. Whats nice is all the stuff I got was from the same tree so its fairly consistant.
Keith Newell
http://www.newellmandolins.com