Meliaceae
Meliaceae, the mahogany family, is a flowering plant family of trees and shrubs in the order Sapindales. They are characterised by alternate pinnate leaves without stipules, by syncarpous bisexual flowers borne in panicles, spikes, or clusters. Most species are evergreen; the family includes about 600 known species, with a pantropical distribution. Various species are used for vegetable oil, soap-making and prized wood; some economically important genera and species belong to this family: Neem tree Azadirachta indica Carapa: includes the "crabwood trees" e.g. Carapa procera Cedrela odorata Central and South America. Pennington, T. D. & Styles, B. T.: A generic monograph of the Meliaceae. Blumea 22: 419-540. Meliaceae in L. Watson and M. J. Dallwitz; the families of flowering plants. Project Meliaceae
Marimba
The marimba is a percussion instrument consisting of a set of wooden bars struck with yarn or rubber mallets to produce musical tones. Resonators or pipes suspended underneath the bars amplify their sound; the bars of a chromatic marimba are arranged like the keys of a piano, with the groups of two and three accidentals raised vertically, overlapping the natural bars to aid the performer both visually and physically. This instrument is a type of idiophone, but with a more resonant and lower-pitched tessitura than the xylophone. A person who plays the marimba is called a marimba player. Modern uses of the marimba include solo performances and brass ensembles, marimba concertos, jazz ensembles, marching band and bugle corps, indoor percussion ensembles, orchestral compositions. Contemporary composers have used the unique sound of the marimba more in recent years. Xylophones are used in music of west and central Africa. In Latin America, enslaved Africans recreated them in the 17th centuries; the name marimba stems from Bantu marimba or malimba,'xylophone'.
According to some Western sources, the word'marimba' is formed from ma'many' and rimba'single-bar xylophone,' however the use of the term marimba and/or derivative terms is not present in any West African language. The instrument itself is present, but is called balafon or heri in Mali and/or Guinea, while it is known as gyil among the Akan peoples in and around Ghana; the word marimba and derivative words is used in East and Southern Africa. A survey of the literature on the African marimba and related instruments, like the Xylorimba and ilimba indicate a relationship between the word marimba and the various lamellaphones found all over Central and East Africa. Other sources credit the creation of the marimba and the kalimba to Queen Marimba of the Wakambi people, who live south of Lake Victoria. In the Shona language "imba" means song. Kuimba is to sing. Marimba, is said to be the "mother of song" and the creator of all the instruments, including the marimba. Mama means mother in Kiswahili, so it makes perfect sense that the word mother would be combined with the word "imba", the unconjugated verb for'sing'.
The karimba is said to have been created by Queen Marimba. In much of East & Central Africa the karimba is seen as a hand-held version of the marimba. Diatonic xylophones were introduced to Central America in the 17th century; the first historical record of Mayan musicians using gourd resonator marimbas in Guatemala was made in 1680, by the historian Domingo Juarros. It became more widespread during the 18th and 19th centuries, as Mayan and Ladino ensembles started using it on festivals. In 1821, the marimba was proclaimed the national instrument of Guatemala in its independence proclamation. In 1850, Mexican marimbist Manuel Bolán Cruz, modified the old bow marimba, by the wooden straight one, lengthening the legs so that the musicians could play in a standing mode, expanded the keyboard and replaced the gourd resonators by wooden boxes. In 1892, Mexican musician Corazón de Jesús Borras Moreno expanded marimba to include the chromatic scale by adding another row of sound bars, akin to black keys on the piano.
The name marimba was applied to the orchestra instrument inspired by the Latin American model. In the United States, companies like Deagan and Leedy company adapted the Latin American instruments for use in western music. Metal tubes were used as resonators, fine-tuned by rotating metal discs at the bottom; the marimbas were first used for light dance, such as Vaudeville theater and comedy shows. Clair Omar Musser was a chief proponent of marimba in the United States at the time. French composer Darius Milhaud made the ground-breaking introduction of marimbas into Western classical music in his 1947 Concerto for Marimba and Vibraphone. Four-mallet grip was employed enhancing interest for the instrument. In the late 20th century and contemporary composers found new ways to use marimba: notable examples include Leoš Janáček, Carl Orff, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Hans Werner Henze, Pierre Boulez and Steve Reich. Marimba bars are made of either wood or synthetic material. Rosewood is the most desirable.
Bars made from synthetic materials fall short in sound quality in comparison to wooden bars, but are less expensive and yield added durability and weather resistance, making them suitable for outdoor use. Bubinga and mahogany have been cited as comparable to rosewood in quality for use as marimba bars; the specific rosewood, Dalbergia stevensonii, only grows in Southern Guatemala and Belize the British Honduras. This wood has a Janka rating of 2200, about three times harder than Silver Maple; the bars are wider and longer at the lowest pitched notes, get narrower and shorter as the notes get higher. During the tuning, wood is taken from the middle underside of the bar to lower the pitch; because of this, the bars are thinner in the lowest pitch register and thicker in the highest pitch register. In Africa, most marimbas are made by local artisans from locally available materials. Marimba bars produce their fullest sound when struck just off center, while striking the bar in the center produces a more articulate tone.
On chromatic marimbas, the accidentals can be played on the extreme front edge of the bar, away from the node if neces
Fountain pen
A fountain pen is a nib pen that, unlike its predecessor, the dip pen, contains an internal reservoir of liquid ink. The pen draws ink from the reservoir through a feed to the nib and deposits it on paper via a combination of gravity and capillary action. Filling the reservoir with ink may be achieved manually, via the use of a Pasteur pipette or syringe, or via an internal filling mechanism which creates suction or a vacuum to transfer ink directly through the nib into the reservoir; some pens employ removable reservoirs in the form of pre-filled ink cartridges. An early historical mention of what appears to be a reservoir pen dates back to the 10th century. According to Ali Abuzar Mari in his Kitab al-Majalis wa'l-musayarat, the Fatimid caliph Al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah demanded a pen that would not stain his hands or clothes, was provided with a pen that held ink in a reservoir, allowing it to be held upside-down without leaking. There is compelling evidence that a working fountain pen was constructed and used during the Renaissance by artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonardo's journals contain drawings with cross-sections of what appears to be a reservoir pen that works by both gravity and capillary action. Historians took note of the fact that the handwriting in the inventor's surviving journals is of a consistent contrast throughout, rather than the characteristic fading pattern typical of a quill pen caused by expending and re-dipping. While no physical item survives, several working models were reconstructed in 2011 by artist Amerigo Bombara that have since been put on display in museums dedicated to Leonardo; the fountain pen was available in Europe in the 17th century, is shown by contemporary references. In Deliciae Physico-Mathematicae, German inventor Daniel Schwenter described a pen made from two quills. One quill served as a reservoir for ink inside the other quill; the ink was sealed inside the quill with cork. Ink was squeezed through a small hole to the writing point. In 1663 Samuel Pepys referred to a metal pen "to carry ink". Noted Maryland historian Hester Dorsey Richardson documented a reference to "three silver fountain pens, worth 15 shillings" in England during the reign of Charles II, c.
1649–1685. By the early 18th century such pens were commonly known as "fountain pens". Hester Dorsey Richardson found a 1734 notation made by Robert Morris the elder in the ledger of the expenses of Robert Morris the younger, at the time in Philadelphia, for "one fountain pen"; the best-known reference, however, is that of Nicholas Bion, whose illustrated description of a "plume sans fin" was published in 1709 in his treatise published in English in 1723 as "The Construction and Principal Uses of Mathematical Instruments". The earliest datable pen of the form described by Bion is inscribed 1702, while other examples bear French hallmarks as late as the early 19th century. Progress in developing a reliable pen was slow until the mid-19th century because of an imperfect understanding of the role that air pressure plays in the operation of pens. Furthermore, most inks were corrosive and full of sedimentary inclusions; the first English patent for a fountain pen was issued in May 1809 to Frederick Fölsch, with a patent covering an improved fountain pen feed issued to Joseph Bramah in September 1809.
John Scheffer's patent of 1819 was the first design to see commercial success, with a number of surviving examples of his "Penographic" known. Another noteworthy pioneer design was John Jacob Parker's, patented in 1832 – a self-filler with a screw-operated piston; the Romanian inventor Petrache Poenaru received a French patent on May 25, 1827, for the invention of a fountain pen with a barrel made from a large swan quill. In 1828, Josiah Mason improved a cheap and efficient slip-in nib in Birmingham, which could be added to a fountain pen and in 1830, with the invention of a new machine, William Joseph Gillott, William Mitchell, James Stephen Perry devised a way to mass manufacture robust, cheap steel pen nibs; this boosted the Birmingham pen trade and by the 1850s, more than half the steel-nib pens manufactured in the world were made in Birmingham. Thousands of skilled craftsmen were employed in the industry. Many new manufacturing techniques were perfected, enabling the city's factories to mass-produce their pens cheaply and efficiently.
These were sold worldwide to many who could not afford to write, thus encouraging the development of education and literacy. In 1848, American inventor Azel Storrs Lyman patented a pen with "a combined holder and nib". From the 1850s, there was a accelerating stream of fountain pen patents and pens in production. However, it was only after three key inventions were in place that the fountain pen became a popular writing instrument; those were the iridium-tipped gold nib, hard rubber, free-flowing ink. The first fountain pens making use of all these key ingredients appeared in the 1850s. In the 1870s Duncan MacKinnon, a Canadian living in New York City, Alonzo T. Cross of Providence, Rhode Island, created stylographic pens with a hollow, tubular nib and a wire acting as a valve. Stylographic pens are now used for drafting and technical drawing but were popular in the decade beginning in 1875. In the 1880s the era of the mass-produced fountain pen began; the dominant American producers in this pioneer era were Waterman, of New York City, Wirt, based in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.
Waterman soon outstripped Wirt, along with many companies that sprang up to fill the new and growing fountain pen market. Waterman remained the market leader until the early 1920s. At this time, fountain pens were almo
Lumber
Lumber or timber is a type of wood, processed into beams and planks, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is used for structural purposes but has many other uses as well. There are two main types of lumber, it may be surfaced on one or more of its faces. Besides pulpwood, rough lumber is the raw material for furniture-making and other items requiring additional cutting and shaping, it is available in many species hardwoods. Finished lumber is supplied in standard sizes for the construction industry – softwood, from coniferous species, including pine and spruce, hemlock, but some hardwood, for high-grade flooring, it is more made from softwood than hardwoods, 80% of lumber comes from softwood. In the United States milled boards of wood are referred to as lumber. However, in Britain and other Commonwealth nations, the term timber is instead used to describe sawn wood products, like floor boards. In the United States and Canada timber describes standing or felled trees. In Canada, lumber describes cut and surfaced wood.
In the United Kingdom, the word lumber is used in relation to wood and has several other meanings, including unused or unwanted items. Referring to wood, Timber is universally used instead. Remanufactured lumber is the result of secondary or tertiary processing/cutting of milled lumber, it is lumber cut for industrial or wood-packaging use. Lumber is cut by ripsaw or resaw to create dimensions that are not processed by a primary sawmill. Resawing is the splitting of 1-inch through 12-inch hardwood or softwood lumber into two or more thinner pieces of full-length boards. For example, splitting a ten-foot 2×4 into two ten-foot 1×4s is considered resawing. Structural lumber may be produced from recycled plastic and new plastic stock, its introduction has been opposed by the forestry industry. Blending fiberglass in plastic lumber enhances its strength and fire resistance. Plastic fiberglass structural lumber can have a "class 1 flame spread rating of 25 or less, when tested in accordance with ASTM standard E 84," which means it burns slower than all treated wood lumber.
Logs are converted into timber by being hewn, or split. Sawing with a rip saw is the most common method, because sawing allows logs of lower quality, with irregular grain and large knots, to be used and is more economical. There are various types of sawing: Plain sawn – A log sawn through without adjusting the position of the log and the grain runs across the width of the boards. Quarter sawn and rift sawn – These terms have been confused in history but mean lumber sawn so the annual rings are reasonably perpendicular to the sides of the lumber. Boxed heart – The pith remains within the piece with some allowance for exposure. Heart center – the center core of a log. Free of heart center – A side-cut timber without any pith. Free of knots – No knots are present. Dimensional lumber is lumber, cut to standardized width and depth, specified in inches. Carpenters extensively use dimensional lumber in framing wooden buildings. Common sizes include 2×4, 2×6, 4×4; the length of a board is specified separately from the width and depth.
It is thus possible to find 2×4s that are four and twelve feet in length. In Canada and the United States, the standard lengths of lumber are 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22 and 24 feet. For wall framing, "stud" or "precut" sizes are available, are used. For an eight-, nine-, or ten-foot ceiling height, studs are available in 92 5⁄8 inches, 104 5⁄8 inches, 116 5⁄8 inches; the term "stud" is used inconsistently to specify length. Under the prescription of the Method of Construction issued by the Southern Song government in the early 12th century, timbers were standardized to eight cross-sectional dimensions. Regardless of the actual dimensions of the timber, the ratio between width and height was maintained at 1:1.5. Units are in Song Dynasty inches. Timber smaller than the 8th class were called "unclassed"; the width of a timber is referred to as one "timber", the dimensions of other structural components were quoted in multiples of "timber". The dimensions of timbers in similar application show a gradual diminution from the Sui Dyansty to the modern era.
The length of a unit of dimensional lumber is limited by the height and girth of the tree it is milled from. In general the maximum length is 24 ft. Engineered wood products, manufactured by binding the strands, fibers, or veneers of wood, together with adhesives, to form composite materials, offer more flexibility and greater structural strength than typical wood building materials. Pre-cut studs save a framer much time, because they are pre-cut by the manufacturer for use in 8-, 9-
Engineered wood
Engineered wood called composite wood, man-made wood, or manufactured board, includes a range of derivative wood products which are manufactured by binding or fixing the strands, fibres, or veneers or boards of wood, together with adhesives, or other methods of fixation to form composite materials. These products are engineered to precise design specifications which are tested to meet national or international standards. Engineered wood products are used in a variety of applications, from home construction to commercial buildings to industrial products; the products beams that replace steel in many building projects. Engineered wood products are made from the same hardwoods and softwoods used to manufacture lumber. Sawmill scraps and other wood waste can be used for engineered wood composed of wood particles or fibers, but whole logs are used for veneers, such as plywood, MDF or particle board; some engineered wood products, like oriented strand board, can use trees from the poplar family, a common but non-structural species.
Alternatively, it is possible to manufacture similar engineered bamboo from bamboo. Flat pack furniture is made out of man-made wood due to its low manufacturing costs and its low weight. Plywood, a wood structural panel, is sometimes called the original engineered wood product. Plywood is manufactured from sheets of cross-laminated veneer and bonded under heat and pressure with durable, moisture-resistant adhesives. By alternating the grain direction of the veneers from layer to layer, or “cross-orienting”, panel strength and stiffness in both directions are maximized. Other structural wood panels include oriented strand board and structural composite panels.this type of wood used in engineering drawing board to a specific range Densified wood is made by using a mechanical hot press to compress wood fibers and increase the density by a factor of three. This increase in density is expected to enhance the strength and stiffness of the wood by a proportional amount. Early studies confirmed this result with a reported increase in mechanical strength by a factor of three.
More recent studies have combined chemical process with traditional mechanical hot press methods to increase density and thus mechanical properties of the wood. In these methods, chemical processes break down lignin and hemicellulose, found in wood. Following dissolution, the cellulose strands that remain are mechanically hot. Compared to the three-fold increase in strength observed from hot pressing alone, chemically processed wood has been shown to yield an 11-fold improvement; this extra strength comes from hydrogen bonds formed between the aligned cellulose nanofibers. The densified wood possessed mechanical strength properties on par with steel used in building construction, opening the door for applications of densified wood in situations where regular strength wood would fail. Environmentally, wood requires less carbon dioxide to produce than steel and acts as a source for carbon sequestration. Medium-density fibreboard, is made by breaking down hardwood or softwood residuals into wood fibres, combining it with wax and a resin binder, forming panels by applying high temperature and pressure.
Particle board is manufactured from wood chips, sawmil shavings, or sawdust, a synthetic resin or other suitable binder, pressed and extruded. Oriented strand board known as flakeboard, waferboard, or chipboard, is similar but uses machined wood flakes offering more strength. Particle board is cheaper and more uniform than conventional wood and plywood and is substituted for them when cost is more important than strength and appearance. A major disadvantage of particleboard is that it is prone to expansion and discoloration due to moisture when it is not covered with paint or another sealer. Oriented strand board is a wood structural panel manufactured from rectangular-shaped strands of wood that are oriented lengthwise and arranged in layers, laid up into mats, bonded together with moisture-resistant, heat-cured adhesives; the individual layers can be cross-oriented to provide strength and stiffness to the panel. However, most OSB boards are delivered with more strength in one direction; the wood strands in the outmost layer on each side of the board are aligned into the strongest direction of the board.
Arrows on the product will identify the strongest direction of the board. Produced in huge, continuous mats, OSB is a solid panel product of consistent quality with no laps, gaps or voids. OSB is delivered in various dimensions and levels of water resistance. Glued laminated timber is composed of several layers of dimensional timber glued together with moisture-resistant adhesives, creating a large, structural member that can be used as vertical columns or horizontal beams. Glulam can be produced in curved shapes, offering extensive design flexibility. Laminated veneer lumber is produced by bonding thin wood veneers together in a large billet; the grain of all veneers in the LVL billet is parallel to the long direction. The resulting product features enhanced mechanical properties and dimensional stability that offer a broader range in product width and length than conventional lumber. LVL is a member of the structural composite lumber family of engineered wood products that are used in the same structural applications as
Kingwood (wood)
Kingwood is a classic furniture wood exclusively used for inlays on fine furniture. It was the most expensive wood in general use for furniture making in the seventeenth century, at which time it was known as princes wood, it is used in the solid for small items and turned work, including parts of billiard cues, e.g. those made by John Parris. It is brownish-purple with occasional irregular swirls, it contains pale streaks of a similar colour to the sapwood, as in the picture. The wood is dense and hard and can be brought to a spectacular finish, it hardness it can be difficult to work with hand tools. It has a tendency to blunt tools due to its abrasive properties, it is available only in small sizes. Other woods yielded by the same genus are cocobolo, African blackwood, Bombay blackwood and tulipwood. Texts on Wikisource: "Kingwood". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. "Kingwood". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920. "Kingwood". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921
Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that has six strings. It is played with both hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the finger/fingernails of one hand, while fretting with the fingers of the other hand; the sound of the vibrating strings is projected either acoustically, by means of the hollow chamber of the guitar, or through an electrical amplifier and a speaker. The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning; the modern guitar was preceded by the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, the five-course baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument. There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar, the steel-string acoustic guitar, the archtop guitar, sometimes called a "jazz guitar"; the tone of an acoustic guitar is produced by the strings' vibration, amplified by the hollow body of the guitar, which acts as a resonating chamber.
The classical guitar is played as a solo instrument using a comprehensive finger-picking technique where each string is plucked individually by the player's fingers, as opposed to being strummed. The term "finger-picking" can refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the United States; the acoustic bass guitar is a low-pitched instrument, one octave below a regular guitar. Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, use an amplifier and a loudspeaker that both makes the sound of the instrument loud enough for the performers and audience to hear, given that it produces an electric signal when played, that can electronically manipulate and shape the tone using an equalizer and a huge variety of electronic effects units, the most used ones being distortion and reverb. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but solid wood guitars began to dominate during the 1960s and 1970s, as they are less prone to unwanted acoustic feedback "howls"; as with acoustic guitars, there are a number of types of electric guitars, including hollowbody guitars, archtop guitars and solid-body guitars, which are used in rock music.
The loud, amplified sound and sonic power of the electric guitar played through a guitar amp has played a key role in the development of blues and rock music, both as an accompaniment instrument and performing guitar solos, in many rock subgenres, notably heavy metal music and punk rock. The electric guitar has had a major influence on popular culture; the guitar is used in a wide variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, country, folk, jota, metal, reggae, rock and many forms of pop. Before the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, a flat back, most with incurved sides." The term is used to refer to a number of chordophones that were developed and used across Europe, beginning in the 12th century and in the Americas. A 3,300-year-old stone carving of a Hittite bard playing a stringed instrument is the oldest iconographic representation of a chordophone and clay plaques from Babylonia show people playing an instrument that has a strong resemblance to the guitar, indicating a possible Babylonian origin for the guitar.
The modern word guitar, its antecedents, has been applied to a wide variety of chordophones since classical times and as such causes confusion. The English word guitar, the German Gitarre, the French guitare were all adopted from the Spanish guitarra, which comes from the Andalusian Arabic قيثارة and the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the Ancient Greek κιθάρα. Which comes from the Persian word "sihtar"; this pattern of naming is visible in setar and sitar. The word "tar" at the end of all of these words is a Persian word that means "string". Many influences are cited as antecedents to the modern guitar. Although the development of the earliest "guitars" is lost in the history of medieval Spain, two instruments are cited as their most influential predecessors, the European lute and its cousin, the four-string oud. At least two instruments called "guitars" were in use in Spain by 1200: the guitarra latina and the so-called guitarra morisca; the guitarra morisca had a rounded back, wide fingerboard, several sound holes.
The guitarra Latina had a narrower neck. By the 14th century the qualifiers "moresca" or "morisca" and "latina" had been dropped, these two cordophones were referred to as guitars; the Spanish vihuela, called in Italian the "viola da mano", a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, is considered to have been the single most important influence in the development of the baroque guitar. It had six courses, lute-like tuning in fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a cut waist, it was larger than the contemporary four-course guitars. By the 16th century, the vihuela's construction had more in common with the modern guitar, with its curved one-piece ribs, than with the viols, more like a larger version of the contemporary four-course guita
