Eugene, My lady of over thirty years (we still "live in sin", but don't tell the grandchildren of our trangression) has a phrase. "Ask Murphy the time and he'll tell you how to build a watch".
> Wow. There's a whole lot of writing going on here to clrify Herbert's inquiry into what, I'm pretty sure, was trying to address the flame/figure of maple (or similar flamed timber). Yup, but had he said figure instead of tiger stripe I wouldn't have given the instructions on "watch building". It was a fun speculation on the way that a wood can have that pattern. I had just accepted the pattern before his question. Given that every tree grows with annular rings and with longitutinal vesicles (the grain we work with) it would seem that all trees should have "un-figured" planks, except as the annular rings pass through them cross-wise. It made me think about the flamed/figured maple. I have a guess. What if the genetic evolution of the tree in question involved closely spaced branches (that would make the patterns of the branches in the live wood), but then the further evolution, as climate changed, inhibited those closely spaced branches. The embryonic nubbins of the abortive branches would make patterns in the live wood, that would then be preserved in the deeper wood. Just a thought. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
