Wood in Vietnam
Woods are classified according to the beauty, the hardness, the resistance against weather and insects.
From the bottom up, the wood cannot stay against weather or insects (termites, woodworms), and they may not be hard or beautiful at all. They are wood of class 7 or 8. Amongst them are Olive, Fig and Pine. Most of them are white. Others may be in light yellow or pink. Treated wood process may bring them to class 5 or 4.
Wood of class 6 may last for 10 years. Amongst them are Oak, Fig, Winter-Sad. Most of them are pink.
Wood of class 5 and 4 are stronger, and deeper in color. Some of them are called Red-Color. Some Oak woods are in this class. One of the Oak is called all-core Oak, for the wood is hard the same throughout the log. One of the Oak is called non-core Oak, for the wood is as soft the same from outside as the center of the log. It is not hard as most of the Oak, but as soft as the wood of class 6. The good character of this Oak is that the wood is very white in color. One wood that is used for Vietnamese traditional musical instrument is Thanh-Ba (pronounced as thank-bar). Its grain is similar to Spruce, and the color is very light in pink, almost white.
Woods of class 3 are very hard, but the grain is not very beautiful. Sometimes the grain looks like man-made plastic. Some of them are called Steel-Wood. The most famous steel woods are Four-Steel: Dinh (brown), Lim (black), Sen (red), Tau (gray). The Four-Steel woods are used to build temple, cathedral, and bridges. Other steel wood are used to make tool such as plough, loom, or tool handles. They can be used to make bass fingerboard. Ebony is distinct. There is another pure black wood that grows in the south called Say that has small fruits in summer for the kids to enjoy. I do not know the reason this wood is not famous as Ebony. Or maybe it is Ebony itself, I dont know?
Woods of class 2 are light in color, and light in weight, too. They are not hard, and the grain is not very beautiful, either. Some of them are call yellow-heart or golden-core, for in Vietnamese, the word has the above two meanings. The grain may be like fabric without the season circles. They are used to make caved signs, caved banners, building, boxes, liquid containers or coffins. In old time, the wood was painted in very expensive paint for kings or noble people, mostly in blood-red color or gold color (not yellow but as bright as gold). This paint in nowadays is still very expensive. A picture the size of the legal paper may have the price of few hundreds of dollars. A coffin may cost a fortune: few hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Woods of class 1 are the most beautiful of all. Some of the wood look like maple, and may be maple (not sugar maple), for they are only grow in the north of Vietnam. The trunks may be as big as 3 double-bass placed next to one another. They grew on top of rocky mountain hundreds years ago. I was hired by the mountaineers to sawn the logs the size of the car. I saw some un-rotted fruits of this tree. They are the same size of the ping-pong balls. People carried the planks home on shoulders to make coffins. Four or more people are needed to carry each plank. There was no way to bring the log down through the rocky mountains dozens of meters above the highest pass, few miles away from the nearest road. Some of the woods are only in the class 6 or 7, for they are neither good nor beautiful, and they are grown on good soils for a score or so. Some of class 1 grow in the south only, and the color is deeper or darker, but the grain is equally fine and beautiful. A new wood is grown in the north Vietnam, called Mother-Pearl wood, for its grain looks like the flame on the Pearls.
Woods of the class 1 are good for string instruments in Back, Rib, and Neck. For the back, the wood may be large enough (or lager) for the whole back in a single plank, but the structure of a plank is not as good as half or a portion of the plank, and the flames on a plank are not as beautiful as on 2 opposite planks (actually 2 book-match wedges next to each other from the same log).
I am not sure Fig wood is good for bass face, for it is classified as bad wood. One of the Fig wood is in class 6 even its color is white. It is still not good for musical instrument, for its grain is plain, and not very fine. Pine wood, which is white, and without seeing the grain is classified as low class wood either. Olive that has white wood as White Pine is also classified as bad wood. Oiled Pine wood (yellow) may last as long as the oil is still in it, but White Pine and Olive wood are insect favorite food. I have not seen a Vietnamese Spruce that is big enough for a bass. They may not grow in a hot climate as in Vietnam. To my reference, I would choose American Spruce for the face of the bass.
