Chiff and Fipple Forums

Very interesting, very cool.

There are many engineered woods available already. This new one does not seem to be in full production yet, if at all. It's apparent that woodwind instrument makers don't look into this sort of material, probably because there are plenty of excellent woods available already. Some people are using heat treated wood such as maple (e.g. Windward), some microwave Boxwood with apparently good results, and some use resin cast bores (Reviol). But centuries of making have established the suitable woods, and I don't think these engineered woods go sufficiently past the normal materials to be of much interest, and also, we have no data on the longevity of this stuff.

There are lots of great tonewoods for flutes that are not endangered. For example, Gidgee in Australia, a fantastic woodwind material.

Nevertheless, an interesting article.

It's interesting the way they just talk about "wood" in that article. I mean there are lots of species with different physical properties and I have to think they would all respond to the process differently? If you do this to, say, mahogany do you get a smooth surface that doesn't need grain-filling? One of the articles mentions that at 95% humidity it starts to swell, so it sounds like it would have the same problem of wet inside/dry outside. I wonder if strength would include resistance to splittng/cracking along the grain?

In maybe 5 years we may see new hemp fiber woods available for many more uses. They're starting to use some hemp board for construction but this tech is early in use and I've only seen hemp board that looked like wood, in the last year or so. I'm taking an inspired guess and say that due to it probably requiring some portion to be a binding adhesive, it might be a very tough fibre with natural resonance in the upper frequencies, like ash, but maybe not as high as maple. Easier to imagine that as a guitar, but for a flute or whistle, only time will tell will tell how it could sound.