Understanding the properties of wood, Professor Jim Woodhouse, January 5, 2024

[@gregholmberg2]

Excellent information about wood as a material. Thank you, Jim Woodhouse. There were some questions about applying this material in a structure (a violin), combining two species, and so on. I'm neither a structural engineer nor a violin maker, but I found a lot of information about engineering musical instruments with wood in "Contemporary Acoustic Guitar" by Trevor Gore, who as a Phd in engineering from Cambridge. The book will tell you how to calculate the stiffness and shear moduli, how to thickness the top and back, and has a mathematical model of the acoustic guitar as a set of four coupled harmonic oscillators, which will tell you how stiff the top and back should be, the square area of the sound hole, and the interior volume of the body. I don't know if anyone has tried to apply this model to the violin, but it would make an interesting project.

[@vendelius]

Fascinating..

[@simonmasters3295]

Respect for Spruce eh? After a day splitting and sawing hardwood logs I think grain has my brain!