A good wood for soundboard crafting for excellent lutherie instruments should have close and uniform growth rings, a good workability and a solid strength-to-weight ratio. Just a small percentage of the trees is selected for soundboard crafting: once the best tree trunks have been chosen (the specimen in the photo is 200 years old), they are manually split into quarters. In that way, checking the quality of the woodgrain and avoiding certain flaws becomes easier.
