From Roger Moore:

Re: Secret of the great violins? The wood, study suggests (July 1): I also have been interested in the woodworking skills that have produced the great violins for many years.

I have been a woodworker for close to forty years. I have studied with many great technicians incl. the likes of James Kernov and Monroe Robinson.

We also own and have rights to large old growth tracts of land. We only log the down trees. We have our own sawmill. Old growth redwood on the Mendocino Coast of California is in the 800-1400 year old range. I have used thousands of board feet in the cabinet shop.

Years ago while logging we accidental discovered by dropping a metal pilling bar on a log that it had very nice sound qualities. Since that time we “tap” our logs to listen to the sound. I have had several musicians in the shop and in the forest do this very thing. About tens years ago we ran across a log that had sound qualities far beyond anything that any other log ever produced by our discoveries. The log had unique growing and drying conditions. There is no way, in my opinion that uniform, very dense wood; over 1000 year old logs produce the same sound qualities. I think logs like the tree we discovered was known about long ago, that wood was treasured and used only for the very best use. I have several hundred feet from this log just for that purpose.

I think there is a lot more to knowing about sound quality than can be discovered by a cat scan. I would like to have this logs wood analyzed I am positive it would be very different than any other old growth redwood here on the Coast.