Ancient Kauri HarpWE JUST FINISHED THE OLDEST HARP IN THE WORLD

Every summer, Pamela and I take one special, showcase harp to the harp conferences. So every winter, we have to decide what the 'harp of the year' is going to be.

The December, 2004 issue of Fine Woodworking magazine had an article about some huge Kauri logs... we were both completely intrigued by the idea of building a harp from this unique wood.

... Our harps have a number of highly curved pieces, so we need wood that's at least 9 inches wide and 2 inches thick. When I call most of my lumber suppliers, they often groan quietly and say they'll be happy to pull whatever wide stock they have, but it may not be much.

I told Bob, however, that I wanted a board 14 inches wide, 10 feet long and 2 inches thick, and his response was "Well, OK, I guess I can cut something down for you."! Music to a harpmakers ears! He was able to select a beautiful figured board for me that was just big enough to build one 38-string DragonHeart harp.

The color and appearance of the ancient Kauri are not unlike teak, but lighter in weight and color. The DragonHeart in Cherry or Walnut usually weighs about 25 pounds, but in Kauri it came in at 23 pounds.

The other thing that most impressed me, as a woodworker, was that the Kauri has 50 to 60 growth rings per inch. Most of our Cherry and Walnut we use today have 4 to 6 rings per inch, and occasionally up to 10. So the Kauri has a very tight grain and no real visible grain pattern.

It has a lovely golden color, and because of the incredibly fine grain, it has to be sanded down to 1200 grit sandpaper, instead of the usual 320 grit, before the finish can be applied. The benefit of all this sanding, though, is that the wood develops a beautiful inner glow that I've never seen in any other wood.

The sound of the Kauri made it worth all the effort, as well. It has a wonderful sweet tone that was recognizably different from Cherry or Walnut from the moment it was strung.

We had a customer bring his two-year-old Walnut DragonHeart in for regulation the day after we strung the Kauri, and we all heard the sound difference between the two harps immediately, even with the Kauri only barely holding tune. We almost sold the Kauri harp before it even made it to the conferences!

The wood was a joy to work with, also, with a very light and pleasant fragrance when cut, and not at all difficult to work. Kauri costs about 8 to 10 times what we normally pay for Cherry or Walnut, but it was worth every penny.

The board arrived via FedEx in mid-May, fully boxed and well protected. When I helped unload it, I told the FedEx driver about the wood and its history, to his obvious interest. So when we got it into the receiving room of the shop, I had to open it up right away so he could see it, too. I don't know what I was expecting, perhaps a soft neon-green glow or something, but the wood looked.. well, it looked just like any other board, rough cut with some nice figure visible, but no other indication in the unfinished board of its extreme age.

So I made some calls, and found that I could get a piece of the Kauri radiocarbon dated at the Radioisotope Research Center at the University of Georgia for a fairly reasonable price. Joan Noakes, the head of the Center, was also intrigued by the wood, but for different reasons. Radiocarbon dating has a maximum effective age indication of 50,000 years, so the Kauri coming in at 45,000 to 50,000 years was going to challenge the limits of his equipment.

For the techies among you, carbon 14, or radioactive carbon, has a half-life of 5,000 years, or, after 5,000 years, only half of the original carbon-14 still exists in any organic material. Their equipment can measure up to 10 half-lives, or 1/1,024th of the original carbon-14, or 50,000 years. After that, there's just not enough left to measure, and you have to resort to the more complex radio-uranium dating.

The Radioisotope Research Center normally needs two months or more to get the testing completed, but when I told John that HarpCon was just a month away at that point, he was very accommodating and got the results to us on the way to Montana. We were quite pleased to hear that the age of our wood was 45,399 (give or take 500 years!), and we received a letter certifying the age.

I was glad to have the certification at HarpCon, to satisfy the skeptics, along with all the pictures of the 'harvesting' of these huge logs. Having the Kauri harp at the conferences was really a treat. The look on peoples' faces when we told them the wood was 45,000 years old was worth all the effort, and when they heard it played, we could only smile.

We had a great deal of interest in the harp at HarpCon, and it was purchased by a lady in Oregon. Since she had flown to the show, and wasn't able to fly back with it, she very graciously agreed to let us take it to the Somerset Harp Festival ten days later, then send it to her afterwards. While it was on display at Somerset, a lady from Virginia wanted both the unique sound and the beautiful wood, and asked us to build one for her just like it.

So, the harp is now on the coast of Oregon, I've ordered another board from Ancient Wood, and I've sent some photos of the Kauri DragonHeart to them to go in their next catalog and on their website. It's been a real pleasure to be part of the unique adventure in harpbuilding!

Heartland Harps & Music

Dave Woodworth and Pamela Bruner
800-969-4277
www.heartlandharps.com