Check this out

There is lots of information on the internet on the dimensional stability of wood. Here is one quote from http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/waac/wn/wn06/wn06-2/wn06-201.html

"There is no known coating which adheres to wood and is also completely impervious to water vapor. Even the most effective coating will permit the eventual equilibration of a coated wood object to the relative humidity and temperature conditions of its surroundings."

So don't take my word for it. Buyer beware! I don't doubt that wood will sound good at least initially. But you won't have a stable platform and that is trouble. Boats, on the other hand, are made to swell with the absorbtion of water. This is taken into account in their design. The swelling of the joints is what makes them tight. I used to have a wooded lapstrake boat (this is where the hull is made up of overlapping boards rather than one sheet of material) It would leak like heck when first put in the water at the beginning of the season but then tighten right up after a few days.

Please, with all due respect, this is not a boat. In normal temperature and humidity environments that would be encountered in a high end audio home, this is not a problem.

Look, electronic circuits don't last long in salt water immersion tests either. I think we have to be at least semi-realistic about what we are discussing here.

Great care went into the design and manufacture of this turntable. Long term stability was one of the concerns, and it was dealt with in the best way possible. Given a normal environment, this will be quite stable.

I certainly wouldn't recommend this turntable for outdoor patio use in the tropical rain forests of Brazil. For temperature and humidity controlled indoor living room use, this will do just fine.

Should we start a rumor that Teres is getting into the yacht business?

Seriously, Doug I would love to hear one sometime. Any Teres, that is.

Jypres raises some good questions about wood stability. Questions that we have given a lot of thought. We have done a lot to minimize the risks but wood stability is a tricky thing. The bottom line is there will always be at least some risk no matter what we do.

We rely on a number of techniques for stabilization of the platters. Each technique by itself would probably be inadequate but combined we believe the risk to be very low.

Our primary vapor barrier is formed when the core of the platter is assembled. Many small pieces of wood are saturated in epoxy and then joined under light pressure, leaving an effective vapor barrier between each piece. This is a much more effective barrier than can be obtained with a relatively thin finish. Once the core of the platter has been formed it is completely encased with a layer of cocbolo. The veneer is attached with epoxy to form an additional vapor barrier. We top this off with an epoxy coating. The exterior epoxy coating is fairly effective, but by itself would be inadequate.

Even with the above techniques, some limited moisture exchange is inevitable. Using many small pieces of wood with strong epoxy bonds minimizes movement. The dimensional changes in small piece of wood are small enough that the force can usually be contained by a strong bond. It's what we see with plywood. The bond between thin layers is sufficient to stabilize wood even with significant moisture exchange.

In addition to using a lot of small pieces of wood we construct the platter to expand and contract gracefully. The grain of the core of the platter is oriented such that the inevitable microscopic dimensional changes will be uniform around the platters circumference. This way even if there is some change the platter will retain it's concentricity.

Last of all well selected Jatoba for construction of the platter core because it has a very low moisture/dimension coefficient.

Chris