Josh,

There is no way that you need any excuse to carry out such an investigation, ambitious as it was. There is, if possible, even less basis for criticising you for the procedures that you thought out and followed. Remember that many of the great discoveries in science emerged from investigating far nuttier-sounding ideas than  anything you mentioned, and some of them were at first investigated far less carefully than you describe.

From our side, please do not think that we are just being bloody-minded or patronising. A lot of us have had wide experience of the ways that investigations into subtle effects can fall foul of tricky conditions, and the effects that you observed really did sound hard to believe, so please forgive us our reservations. Wood generally is a resilient substance with a large "work of fracture", so damage from any sound levels below (at a thumbsuck say) 150 DB would be surprising. Also, wood is not homogeneous, so it takes some careful statistical work to support surprising results.

I for one did not respond to your question, not because I thought you were being stupid or arrogant, but because I could not see how to do a decent investigation into such a tricky matter at long range. I for one would not discourage you from such independent ideas or work, and I strongly recommend that you do not let anyone else do so either.

I don't know what material you read before or since you dd the work, but here are some that you might like to go through.

In particular, by J.E. Gordon: "Structures, or why things don't fall down" and "The New Science of Strong materials, or why you don't fall through the floor"

by Steven Vogel: "Cats Paws and Catapults"

and by M.E. Eberhart: "Why Things Break"

And enjoy your work!

Cheers,

Jon