wooden tonearm. cld diy

Anthonya, any dense wood will work like cocobolo, Ebony, Blood wood, Lignam vitae and so forth. Schroder infuses his with a resin so they are very hard. The trick is getting a hole down the middle. You will need a lath and a pen mandrel to do this. You do not necessarily need anything in the center. If you drill the right sized hole you can insert any tubular material. I would use thin walled aluminum tubing as it is stiff. At the back of the arm you could copy Schroder's reference arm. It uses kevlar thread and attracting magnets. Twisting the thread provides anti skating. Have a look at it. Next would be a gimbal set up with rings and needle bearings, tougher to do. Now you need a mini lath set up. 

I have on hand one of Joe Grado's gunstock walnut arms. So that is a good recommendation for arm use.

so it's could be just wood? how bout sleeving the cable with cotton?

what do you think about ceramic tube internal wall? those ceramic headshell sound awfully nice.