Favorite wood for a wooden camera?

Thanks for all the info and comments.

I don't trust it to use as a ladder .... it is about 12 feet long, and that's a long way to fall if it breaks.

I think I will make an 8x10 pinhole camera to start with. I fancy one that is very light .... more likely to carry it and use it.

trythis said:

Some wood even with straight grain warps from the heat of cutting like soft maple, was what I was thinking.

String Instrument makers tend to used very straight grain, quarter sawn spruce, while xylophones are made from very dense woods and they both vibrate very well when cut to harmonically specific lengths or have bridges at focal points of vibration. I doubt your ladder is made of anything special that would cause harmonics even if it was somehow assembled in a way that would resonate.

If your not using it as a ladder use it for a camera, or a pattern for one.


Typos made on a tiny phone...

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If I follow you correctly, you seem to be implying that a spruce musical instrument soundboard only vibrates because the instrument maker does specific things to make it vibrate. This actually isn't the case.The soundboard material is chosen because it vibrates very readily. The maker does certain things in the construction of the instrument to utilise, control and discipline this vibration, but the potential for vibration is already there in the raw material. The bottom line is that it really isn't a good idea to build a large-format camera from spruce, or pine. It vibrate too readily.

Alan

They dont make xylophones out of pine because ebony and rosewood resonate better. The strings vibrate on wood instruments, the thin pine amplifies it by being light weight like a drum skin. I'm not suggesting that pine or any wood is best for making cameras more stable, I am saying that the pine in question may or may not warp from the heat of a power saw blade.

The specific placement of a bridge on a violin or guitar effects how much resonance the instrument has in exactly the same way that holding a hollow tube with your fingers and striking it like a bell works only if the tube is suspended in a specific harmonic location.

If you happen to have a 1 x 2 x 3' long piece of pine and it 1 x 2 x 3' long piece of Rosewood and you hold them in the exact location of a harmonic resonance the Rosewood will will resonate much louder and longer. The denser the material The more resonance, the exact reason we don't make bells out of wood. I think pine would actually absorb more vibration than Rosewood. I am not a physicist but I did study this in a physics class and have built several (crappy) string instruments. I'm still happy to be wrong about anything I say, just speaking from my experience.


Typos made on a tiny phone...

trythis, I do see where you are coming from here, but there is a key point that you have not taken into consideration - the amount of force or energy needed to get different materials to vibrate. You mention rosewood xylophone keys. To get one of these to vibrate enough to produce a good sound you have to hit it quite hard, relatively speaking of course. Vibrating guitar strings just don't work with this much energy, and you wouldn't get much vibration or sound volume from a guitar with a rosewood front. But spruce vibrates readily in response to the small amount of energy being transmitted through the bridge. And if you had a spruce camera this could easily vibrate from the low amount of energy given off when the shutter is fired. A rosewod camera would probably vibrate too, but to a much smaller degree.

Alan

Well if this was TOP CAMERA! We'd have a proper challenge! Haha

Honestly I think the best reason to use rosewood or mahogany or something much denser and I camera is because the bolts that go through it will not mash and tear the wood fibers and the camera can remain more rigid. Pine is so much softer that it will be very easy to torque and bend the wood where the bolts go through it. Perhaps if you had some extremely dense old-growth pine (some of the doors in my house have growth rings less than 1/64th of an inch thick, for example) where the growth rings are actually harder than many hardwoods, weakness may not be a problem. But when machining this type of wood drill bits tend to drift off course much more so than they would in a consistent density wood like Rosewood or mahogany.



Typos made on a tiny phone...

Trythis,
If we could get together I'm sure we would have an interesting time making prototype cameras out of old xylophone keys, redundant guitar fronts and 80 year old ladders...

Alan

When I asked Eric Smith to make me a Zen pinhole camera from a model of the design I supplied in cardboard, we spent about a year refining the design. He is an artist and wood engineer who makes the most incredible precision products in wood you can imagine. Eventually we agreed on a design and I asked him what wood he would choose to make it from. He suggested American Cherry. The result was a Deluxe Pinhole Zen Camera, which is the only one in existence. I have it on a shelf above my computer and polish it with Beeswax once a year. Unfortunately he will not make any more standard or deluxe versions, but I can assure you it is the Leica of wooden cameras.

cliveh said:

When I asked Eric Smith to make me a Zen pinhole camera from a model of the design I supplied in cardboard, we spent about a year refining the design. He is an artist and wood engineer who makes the most incredible precision products in wood you can imagine. Eventually we agreed on a design and I asked him what wood he would choose to make it from. He suggested American Cherry. The result was a Deluxe Pinhole Zen Camera, which is the only one in existence. I have it on a shelf above my computer and polish it with Beeswax once a year. Unfortunately he will not make any more standard or deluxe versions, but I can assure you it is the Leica of wooden cameras.

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Could you share an image of this camera?

TheToadMen said:

Could you share an image of this camera?

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I notice this is not on my web site any more, but it looks similar to the standard versions made from polished Japanese Oak (see my web site), but is made to a much higher precision. So much so, that the back can be inverted and still fit. Although, there is a slight preference to fit one way.

AlanC said:

we would have an interesting time making prototype cameras out of old xylophone keys, redundant guitar fronts and 80 year old ladders...

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If you can find a scrap Mclaren sports car, I believe they are constructed with wood from the very rare carbonfiber tree which would add interest and diversity to the resultant camera