Yesterday, I got to take a trip to Edensaw in Port Townsend. Saw two woods there I’ve not seen before: Kingwood and Lyptus.
The Lyptus is of the most immediate interest. This is the eucalyptus hybrid that’s being grown in managed forests in Brazil, and recommended as a mahogany substitute. I’d love to hear from anyone who has used it: similarities to and differences from mahogany; finishing techniques; anything else.
The kingwood simply got my attention. Seems extreeeemly hard. What’s it like to machine it? Wear and tear on blades? Difficult to finish?
forestgirl — you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can’t take the forest out of the girl 😉
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FG,
I have never seen kingwood, but last night I red a little about it. Apparently it is appropriately named...the king of woods..(Encyclopedia of Furniture Making, E. Joyce)
http://www.weyerhaeuser.com has a little bit of information on Lyptus. There is a wood comparison chart and it seems to suggest Lyptus should be a little harder to work with than Red Oak but easier to work with compared to White Oak.
I have seen Lyptus prefinished flooring and S2S lumber and it is a very beautiful wood. I have heard stories that the trees that are being harvested are quite large and have very few knots. I have also heard there are a few different hardnesses available.
I am thinking about purchasing Lyptus but I do not know if the wood needs special glue or gluing methods?
Well Forestgirl, thanks to your trail blazing, I've finally made it to this thread (still don't know what you're referring to regarding an option in the upper left corner of the screen...Must be that most programmers are right handed and don't know how us lefties think...but I've never been able to figure out the finer points of how this Knots board works.)
Anyway, as for kingwood, it's a member of the rosewood genus; Dalbergia, native to the Ceara region in extreme eastern Brazil (Dalbergia cearensis.) Like the better known Brazilian rosewood; Dalbergia nigra, it is a hard, heavy, fine textured wood with an oily luster...but it tends to be a little more vividly pigmented with dark (almost black) marbling, sometimes with violet highlights. Like all the rosewoods, it contains a quinone called dalbergione that is a strong allergen, so it can be toxic to people who develop a sensitivity to the rosewoods.
The tree that produces kingwood is among the smaller of the rosewood species...so, as pretty as this wood is, it is never available in large dimensions. It has been used in cabinet making for literally centuries. But like it's other much lighter colored cousin in the rosewood clan; tulipwood (with its coral pink and creamy white marbling), kingwood has always been primarily an accent wood, used in small quantities for special decorative purposes, like inlays and turnings.
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