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Post by Si on May 8, 2007 8:26:19 GMT
I have been advised about the following concerning different woods.
If qin will live in a warm place best to use - ɼľ shan mu (fir???)
If qin will live in a cold place best to use - ͩľ tong mu
or ÅÝÍ© pao tong
how does this advise sound to the experts?
Also what are these Mu's in English.
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Post by Charlie Huang on May 8, 2007 9:18:53 GMT
Shanmu is 'Chinese fir' (note: it is not true fir, it is just the name used for it). Tongmu is Chinese paulownia, paotong is the common form of it. The trouble with translation is that these woods could have different meanings, especially the tongmu range of woods.
I'm not sure about 'the best wood to make qin for the best environment' as i'm not an expert on wood matters.
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Post by laoqinyou on May 10, 2007 22:06:45 GMT
Charlie, do you think this is "chinese fir" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunninghamia?My vague recollection of shanmu is that is may not be very specific. I don't know. From practical experience I know that Paulownia is pretty varied, although I am in possession of some from both Portland Oregon, and Maryland. And the seller in Maryland sells to China. Another puzzle is what to make of the term "wutong". The botanists claim it is firmiana. It seems to go by the name of Chinese parasol tree. web.cecs.pdx.edu/~jrb/chin/v22/v22.htmzimu is not a problem however (the traditional qin bottom). It's catalpa. :->. And it's a junk wood in the US and very hard to find. regards jrb |
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Post by guzhenglover on May 11, 2007 2:58:49 GMT
What do you mean by "junk wood"? I'd have thought that (usually) the harder it is to find a particular kind of wood, the pricier that kind of wood is. Or are you saying that catalpa is both hard to find and not sought after?
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Post by Charlie Huang on May 11, 2007 8:03:08 GMT
Well, after going on a mini-quest to find what mu is which wood, that was vaguely what I found from dictionaries et al. The trouble with Chinese names and wood is the variety of names for one wood in question or one name for a variety of different woods.
Someone should do some proper research into this and help us poor qin players to know!
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Post by laoqinyou on May 13, 2007 15:45:06 GMT
A "junk wood" is a wood that isn't used for furniture for the most part. Catalpa
also informally known as the Indian Bean tree is basically not easy to find. Lumberyards
don't sell it. There is a lot of it in the central and eastern US. People *burn it*. It
is used by carvers and you can find "carving-side" samples even on ebay, but those
are too small for qin. If I lived anywhere near Pennsylvania I could probably find some there
but there isn't any in Portland Oregon or nearby. I'm going to try email to a couple of web-based
Penn lumberyards and see if they can do anything. Ironically when I was in Xian last summer, Li Ming-zhong
offered me a piece but I wasn't going to lug it with me the rest of the journey (Xian was the 1st stop).
Catalpa is really a beautiful wood, but it's just not cultural used in the US for the most part.
I took a qin from Taiwan apart a couple of years ago. It was badly warped. The bottom was
catalpa and the top was paulownia. It turned out it was warped because the catalpa was warped.
The top went back to being straight immediately. Poplar is easy to find and is "close", but I still feel
like I've found lots of possible woods for qin tops (including paulownia!) but I could do better for
the bottom.
jrb
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Post by laoqinyou on May 13, 2007 15:46:22 GMT
Typo: carving-side -> carving sized.
jrb
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