I have recently found a source for some really magnificent old-growth redwood. It is perfectly quarter-sawn and very fined grained, with up to 50 grain lines to the inch. That means it took 450 years to grow a board 9 inches across. The source? A wood tank company that has taken down old tanks that used to be on top of apartment building in New York City. Yes – they still use wooden water tanks.
It looks kind of rough on the outside, but 1/2 an inch into the plank it becomes lovely stuff.
Since the water in the wood tank is forever seeping outward through the wood, and the wood dries from the outside, and there are iron bands around the tank, the redwood near the inside of the tank is evenly pink, but about halfway through the plank the wood gets dark and streaky from water and mineral deposits. There are some people who reclaim old growth wood from the bottom of lakes and rivers where it sunk during logging operations. They call this ‘sinker’ wood. The wood is darkened and stained from long exposure underwater and waterborne minerals. This ‘tank’ redwood is kind of ‘sinker’ redwood from up in the sky.
Redwood is known to produce very nice instruments, with a particularly ‘warm’ sound as the redwood is softer and not as stiff as something like sitka spruce. The next ukuleles and parlor guitars are going to be made with redwood tops.