Every year, between 150 and 200 Sitka spruce logs cut from Southeast Alaska forests are barged south to a small company in Concrete, Wash., where they begin their transformation into acoustic guitars played by some of music's biggest stars.
Pacific Rim Tonewoods sends a log buyer north every few months to pick the best logs from the lumber yards of Sealaska Timber Corporation, a subsidiary of Sealaska Corp. Luthiers say Sitka spruce is the best choice for a soundboard, the top of a stringed instrument, due to its strength and the warm tone the wood produces.
"Alaska can grow some pretty nice spruce," Pacific Rim general manager Eric Warner said.
Most of the logs Pacific Rim buys from Sealaska are three or four feet wide, although Warner said occasionally they take a few that are as wide as he is tall (about 6 feet 1 inch). After the spruce logs are barged down from Alaska, trucks haul the logs from the Washington coast to Pacific Rim's sawmill, where they're processed by a crew of up to 15. A 6-foot deck saw is used to cut the logs into discs; those discs are then split and cut down into boards, each of which makes three guitar tops.
Spruce is stronger than steel for its weight, Warner said, which is how Pacific Rim is able to make its soundboards so thin (about one-tenth of an inch thick). Warner personally grades every soundboard Pacific Rim makes -- a total of 120,000 to 150,000 a year.
Pacific Rim supplies top guitar companies like Taylor Guitars and C. F. Martin & Co. with almost all of their soundboards, Warner said. That means that artists from Taylor Swift to Jimmy Buffett almost definitely play guitars made from wood that first grew tall in Southeast Alaska.
Ron Wolfe, Sealaska's natural resource manager, said Sealaska logs about 50 million board feet every year. Sounds like a lot, but it's a far cry from the 600 million annual board feet that was logged back in the 1970s, according to Wolfe, whose first job was on a Prince of Wales Island logging crew. (Sealaska did not begin logging until 1981.) Wolfe said most of Sealaska's customers buy their wood sight unseen based on the wood's grade, determined by a "scaler," an independent third party who also measures the length and diameter of each log. Pacific Rim, on the other hand, actually selects each individual log it buys.
Pacific Rim is looking for "clear wood" when they select their logs, Wolfe said, which means areas that are free of knots. The company also considers the orientation of the grain and usually prefers large-diameter logs.
Sitka spruce doesn't have to leave the state to find its way into a musical instrument. Petr Bucinsky, who builds violins and celli at Petr's Violin Shop in Anchorage, said while harder woods like Engelmann spruce are more responsive and better for violins, he uses Sitka spruce when he builds a cello because sound waves travel more slowly through the softer wood, producing a warmer sound.
Even within spruce, the sound can vary widely. Engelmann spruce grow at high elevations and have 12 to 20 grain lines per centimeter, while lower-growing Sitka spruce has five to eight grain lines per centimeter, Bucinsky said.
John Osnes also builds instruments in Anchorage, and while he uses a variety woods in his violins and celli, the tops are always spruce.
"There's a reason they used to build airplanes out of it. It's really strong," Osnes said.
Right now, Osnes said, he probably has enough Sitka spruce to last him for the rest of his life, especially since he only builds four or five instruments a year.
"I'm 58, and I don't think I'll be making for another 40 years," he said.
As for Sealaska, the company is happy to have a unique customer like Pacific Rim.
"We can stand in a music store in Los Angeles and know there's a good chance that the face of that guitar comes from Sealaska wood," said Richard Harris, Sealaska's executive vice president.
Contact Joshua Saul at jsaul(at)alaskadispatch.com.
CORRECTION: This story was updated Mar. 5, 2010, to correct a sentence about Sealaska's logging history. Sealaska did not begin logging in the Tongass National Forest until 1981.