Choose each instrument material for the job its part does: dense dry hardwood for sticks and drum shells, hollow cane or bone for tubes, thin hide for drumheads, and light straight-grained wood for soundboards. Tap any piece of wood and listen before you carve it, and reject material that could carry lead, arsenic or mercury, which turn up in old paint, pressure-treated timber, solder and some pigments, especially on anything that goes in a mouth.
Part of Music & Simple Instrument Making
Matching wood, cane, bone, hide and metal to instrument parts, a tap-test for wood, and the poisons that salvage can hide.
Match The Material To The Job
An instrument part has one of three jobs: to vibrate (a string, a membrane, a reed, a bar), to carry vibration (a bridge, a soundboard), or to hold shape under load (a frame, a neck, a hoop). The best material differs for each.
| Part | What it needs | Typical choices | What to avoid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Striking bars, claves | Dense, stiff, dry; rings long | Dry dense hardwood | Green or rotten wood |
| Drum shell, log drum | Stiff, stable when dried; will not split | Seasoned hardwood log | Unseasoned log; see Log Drums & Hollow Trunk |
| Drumhead | Thin, strong in tension | Hide from a known animal | Unknown rawhide; see Skin Drums |
| Whistle or flute tube | Hollow, straight, smooth bore | Cane, bamboo, bone, wood | Painted, treated or lead-bearing pipe |
| Soundboard (lyre, diddley bow board) | Light for its stiffness; straight grain | Straight-grained softwood is the traditional choice | Knotty, warped or damp wood |
| Frame, crossbar | Stiff and strong | Hardwood, bamboo | Cracked or insect-damaged wood |
| String | Strong, light, uniform | See String Materials | Frayed or knotted fibre |
The choice of softwood for soundboards is the traditional one in stringed instrument-making, as I recall; I have not tested it here, and a flat piece of any light, straight-grained, seasoned wood will serve a simple instrument.
The Tap Test For Wood
Before spending hours carving, hold the piece loosely and tap it with a knuckle or a stick. A long clear ring suggests dense, dry, sound wood; a dull thud suggests wet, rotten or cracked wood. This is the luthier’s cheap check and costs nothing. Always follow it by looking along the grain for cracks.
Seasoning matters for every wooden part: green wood shrinks as it dries and splits. See Wood Seasoning and, for the properties of different species, Wood Properties.
What To Reject, And Why
Salvage is tempting because it is ready-made, and for instruments it brings three kinds of poison:
- Lead. Old paint, some solder, some glazes and old plumbing can contain lead. The corpus warns about lead glazes in pottery; see Glaze Firing. Lead builds up in the body and harms the developing brains of children especially.
- Arsenic and copper compounds. Much pressure-treated timber made before about the early 2000s was treated with copper-chromium-arsenic preservative (recalled; verify). Do not use treated wood for anything mouthed or burned.
- Mercury compounds. The red pigment vermilion is mercury sulphide, and some old preparations contain mercury; avoid red salvage pigments of unknown origin. Related warnings appear in the corpus’s pigment articles: Mineral Pigments.
A tube of old plumbing pipe is not a flute: lead pipes and lead-soldered joints are common in salvaged plumbing. Do not mouth any pipe unless you know it is cane, bone, bamboo, new clean plastic or a metal you have identified.
Safe finishes are bare wood, beeswax and plain plant oils; see Oil Finishing. Note that rags soaked in drying oils can heat and ignite on their own as the oil cures, so spread them flat to dry or burn them.
Method: A Selection Check
Step 1: Name the part and its job. Vibrate, carry or hold?
Step 2: Choose the lightest sufficient material. Heavier is not better for a soundboard.
Step 3: Tap, look, smell. Reject ringing-dull wood, cracks, rot, mould, and any piece that smells of chemicals.
Step 4: Ask where it came from. If you cannot say what it was before, do not put it in a mouth.
Step 5: Finish safely. Wax or plain oil only.
Common Mistakes
- Using green wood. Cracks and warps.
- Trusting a glossy coating. Old coatings are where lead hides.
- Using the nearest tube. The nearest tube may be lead, treated or painted.
Safety
Lead, arsenic, mercury and sensitising wood dust
Any instrument a child can put in the mouth must be made only of known-safe materials. Never sand, burn or heat painted or treated salvaged timber, and never use lead-bearing pipe, solder or paint. Some woods (yew is a commonly cited example) are toxic or irritating as dust; sand outdoors. See Wind Instruments.
What’s Next
- Learn next: String Materials — materials for the part that actually vibrates
- Combine with: Woodworking — shaping what you choose