Well, it’s not too often that I go out looking for wood in my backyard. Given the work involved in processing raw logs into lumber, and the tiny amounts of wood necessary for building a bowed psaltery, it’s almost always easier for me to just buy pre-processed lumber commercially for my bowed psalteries.

But last year, I was intrigued with the wood of a tree that had just recently been cut down: a medium to large sized Buckthorn. The inside heartwood was sort of a rusty orange color, and it caught my attention. Since Buckthorn trees are typically very small, they aren’t used or harvested commercially as lumber, so out of curiosity I decided to cut a few logs into wood slabs and dry them to see what the wood looked like.

As soon as the first side peeled off the bandsaw, I knew I was in for a treat. The wood was gorgeous, with great color and grain patterns. Unfortunately, I would soon also discover that the wood was incredibly difficult to dry, and my first planks developed significant checks all the way through the wood when drying: this left me with narrow strips of wood which weren’t wide enough to use for a bowed psaltery.

But I had one more large Buckthorn log available, so I decided once more to cut the log into flat sections, this time taking extreme care in sealing the endgrain and stickering the wood after the cutting, to help ensure a slow and stable drying period.

When I finally got the wood all processed, I found a section of wood that was wide enough to be made into a bowed psaltery back (with accompanying sides and pinblock liner), and I got to work.

So, it’s been nearly a year later from the time when the tree was first felled, but the pictures above show the finished psaltery made of Buckthorn. As of 4/15/10, it is still available for sale on the Phantasy Psalteries website.