Has anyone worked much with Black Spruce? Impressions?

[n~dl]

I just had a sort of funny experience in the local hardware store looking for t-nuts for mass-support blocks. Whenever an employee tries to help me it can be tricky explaining what I need things for because guitar work can be so specific, and the Gore/Gillet techniques are even deeper down the rabbit hole of esoterica. So the guy's showing me all these drywall fasteners and stuff, none of which are going to work because I'm explaining myself to him so horribly--BUT, it turns out he's a violin and cello maker! We talked about building and wood and stuff for a while, and he keeps insisting that I should look into black spruce. He had all sorts of wonderful things to say about it.

Searching around this site someone had claimed there could be all sorts of old Martins floating around with black spruce tops, as it can be indistinguishable from adirondack, but that seems strange to me as black spruce only gets to about half the diameter and I thought only grew as far south as northern Minnesota. So anywho, anybody building much with it?

[kiwigeo]

Discussed here: http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showt ... s-tonewood

[Kim]

Searching around this site someone had claimed there could be all sorts of old Martins floating around with black spruce tops, as it can be indistinguishable from adirondack, but that seems strange to me as black spruce only gets to about half the diameter and I thought only grew as far south as northern Minnesota. So anywho, anybody building much with it?

That would probably have been me referring to when CF Martin was sourcing all of its spruce logs for sawyers working the Appalachians. Red and black spruce are very close relatives, so much so that hybridisation occurs. In fact once the foliage has been removed there is no way to tell the difference between them with the naked eye. I have read that sawyers when filling an order would not even attempt to separate red spruce (picea rubens) from black spruce (picea mariana). The only thing that really mattered to them was log size and if either measured up, it would come down.

Apparently red does grow faster than black so there would be more of them making the size requirements, but we are talking about a time when there would have been plenty of old growth black available as well and these would have the girth. My understanding is that Alaska black spruce is very stunted by comparison but I'm not sure if this an effect of topography of if its an entirely different species?? That's why its always a good idea to throw in the Latin name for the species the discussion is based upon just to be clear.

Cheers

Kim

[kiwigeo]

My understanding is that Alaska black spruce is very stunted by comparison.....

I got some black spruce from a dealer in BC a few years back. Unfortunately once I'd scraped the mould off it turned out to be kermode spruce

[Tom West]

Maybe search out Mario Proulx on one of the other forums or via e-mail. Seems I remember him mentioning Black Spruce growing in his area and him using it.
Tom

[kiwigeo]

Maybe search out Mario Proulx on one of the other forums or via e-mail. Seems I remember him mentioning Black Spruce growing in his area and him using it.
Tom

Mario contributes some posts to the thread I referenced earlier on.

[Tom West]

Martin : Very good, don't go to that one myself so I didn't know.
Tom