Overcoming our addiction to tropical hardwoods: the latest alternatives

Ebony trees take between 60 and 200 years to reach maturity. Even then, only one in ten trees felled has a black ‘core’ of sufficient size and quality for use in instrument making. ‘The rest are just left on the forest floor to rot,’ says Munish Chanana, co-CEO and head of research and development at Swiss Wood Solutions (SWS). A spin-off from Swiss university ETH Zurich and Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, SWS was founded in 2016 to develop natural alternatives to tropical hardwoods.

‘Only Madagascan ebony is protected by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) legislation at the moment,’ says Chanana. ‘But there’s little doubt the worldwide ebony trade will soon be restricted, as the sale of rosewood was in 2017.’ Given the extremely slow speed at which tropical hardwoods grow, it goes without saying that stocks have been depleted much faster than forests have been able to recover. ‘The problem is compounded by the vital role these trees play in the ecosystems where they occur, since they provide habitat and nutrients for a wide range of highly adapted species,’ Chanana adds.

Luthiers have long relied on the density and hardness of woods like ebony and rosewood for making fingerboards, tailpieces, tuning pegs and other fittings, but now a number of so-called ‘technical’ woods – natural woods given physical or chemical treatments – have been developed to offer makers the same physical properties at reduced environmental cost. For musicians and dealers…