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Coastal Redwood. Tonewood profile

By terence | October 28, 2009

Sequoia sempervirens | Tonewood Profile | ”Coastal Redwood”

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• Sequoiadendron giganteum- giant sequoia
• Metasequoia- Dawn Redwood

Natural History

Coastal Redwood is sole living example of the Sequoia genus with a natural range from to coastal California to southwestern Oregon. Sequoia sempervirens is a long lived, evergreen tree. It can live for a maximum of 2,200 years and can reach up to 115m high and 8 m in diameter.

Redwood has a soft fibrous bark up to 30 cm thick and when exposed reveals a bright red-brown interior. Coastal Redwoods reproduce both sexually, asexually and through burls. It’s burls are capable of sprouting into new trees once removed from the parent tree.

Status

The species as once subject to indiscriminate logging but now there are 899,000 acres (364,000 ha) of second growth redwood forest in California, managed for timber production.

Notable Trees

1. Hyperion is currently the tallest tree measuring at 115.55 m high. it was discovered in the summer of 2006 by Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor and has been measured as the world’s tallest living organism.
2. Lucky Strike is the most famous redwood tree amongst guitarists. Harvested by Craig and Alica Carter, ‘Lucky Strike’ is the name Craig gave to a log he thought of as almost, if not truly perfect for guitar tops. Read more about the lucky strike log here.

Physical properties

The timber has a deep red hue with straight grain and can often have curly grain. Coastal Redwood is valued for its straight grained beauty, light weight, and resistance to decay. The janka of redwood is around 450 and it has a specific gravity of 0.45.

As a tonewood…

Due to old age and large size of the logs, tops can vary greatly from soft to very stiff and whilst the very best tops can display an exceptional stiffness to weight ratio, some can physically resemble cardboard.

It is used for soundboards for guitars and the burls as top plates for electrics. Noted luthier, Dana Bourgeois says:

“Redwood is usually darker in color than cedar and often displays the same general tonal characteristics, leaning slightly toward darker tones, less definition in the bass, and lower velocity of sound.”

Michael Bashkin: “Assuming the quality of the redwood is good (LS) it can have an exellant strength to weight ratio and logitudinal and cross grain stiffness. In fact I find the cross grain stiffness is stiffer than many other top woods.  It works well but is prone to spliting along the grain which is a a bit off a mystery to me as the woods exhibits a high degree of cross grain medulary rays, or cross-grain silk.”

Mark Mestman wrote in to tell us of an example of salvagingredwood :”Several years ago, I was given a pretty good sized cant of lovely old growth Pacific Coast Redwood, which had been harvested around 100 years ago in the Redwood belts near Santa Cruz, CA. [pictured on the right] This cant was cut from the trestle which supported a very old large workbench in a very old barn. The property owner realized this perfectly quarter-sawn Redwood cant, with it’s 30+ grains per inch of dead-straight grain, was too special to buck into firewood.  He felt this wood had some “special purpose,” as he called it, and he declined to crosscut the cant at all. Years later, when that property owner and I became friends, when he learned that I was a guitarmaker, he gave that huge Redwood cant to me. I resawed that cant into 40 of the nicest Redwood tops I have ever seen, let alone built with!”

Subjective tone…

I would broadly characterise the tone of Coastal redwood as being a crisper than Cedar with all the rich, complex overtones of cedar.

Availability

As a managed species, Redwood stocks are still limited and the majority of tonewood is currently sourced from naturally fallen trees or the “sinker” wood from sunken logs dredged from some of the N.California rivers.

Links/ References:
Bourgeois Guitars http://www.pantheonguitars.com/
LMI http://lmii.com
Special thanks to Hank Mauel and Michael Bashkin for their help with this article.

©2008 Terence Tan.

Pictures copyright individual holders.
Photos of redwood cant courtesy of Mark Mestman http://www.RedfeatherMusic.com

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Topics: Tonewood Database |

4 Responses to “Coastal Redwood. Tonewood profile”

1. Mark Mestman Says:
   October 30th, 2009 at 1:38 am

   I have been building with Redwood tops since 1992, and I prefer Redwood over Spruce or Cedar.

   Redwood tops sound rich and full pretty much right away, this wood does not require the lengthy acoustic “break-in” period typical of Spruce tops.

   True, Redwood can be a bit tricky to work, in that it splits and splinters more easily than Spruce, but its distinctive, original tone is very appropriate for the hand-builder, further setting hand-made guitars apart from factory instruments.

2. Leet Says:
   October 30th, 2009 at 5:09 pm

   Amaze to see the redwood photo… nice one….

3. Ed Says:
   October 31st, 2009 at 8:08 pm

   You know as a guitar, I have had the pleasure of playing some really fine instuments. But in my opinion I think it’s not right to cut a 2000 year old tree, just to say”It came from a tree that old”. I love great sounding guitars,fiddles,mandolins,or basses made from the best material possible. I just dont think the cost to the environment is worth it.(just my opinion)

4. John Says:
   November 12th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

   Ed: “I think it’s not right to cut a 2000 year old tree”

   I completely agree, but I believe the article stated that it’s typically “sourced from naturally fallen trees or the ’sinker’ wood from sunken logs.” =]

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