Replies

1. 
   jonsherryl | Oct 26, 2003 07:52pm | #1

   Mike, the rosewoods are not an easy topic to master. The rosewood genus; Dalbergia, contains about 250 species and is pan-tropic in distribution. Most of its members are small shrubs or climbers...in fact, even the 15 to 20 species that are important timber sources aren't particularly large trees.

   Separating the rosewoods from other pretenders isn't a particularly difficult task in that all of the true Dalbergias have a distinctive scent and oiliness...But when you get down to the short strokes of trying to determine which rosewood you have, it gets a whole lot more challenging. About half of the rosewoods are so distinctive in terms of color and/or texture that they can be sorted fairly quickly. For example: the coral pink and cream colored marbling in tulipwood is a give-away; kingwood's purple highlights set it apart; African blackwood's almost pitch black color is unique; cocobolo's amber striping and slightly coarser texture isn't matched by any of the other rosewoods, and Indian sissoo's texture and lighter more uniform orange color is a good clue...but variability among the other rosewoods in terms of color, density and texture overlap enough that it becomes a real guessing game...and you pretty much need to know the geographic source to narrow it down.

   I'm unaware of a reference that offers photographic comparisons of all the rosewoods...but Timbers of the New World, by Record and Hess provides a helpful and relatively thorough review of the taxonomy and geographic distribution of the genus, along with pretty good descriptions of physical characteristics of the New World species...However, if you really want to get on top of this subject, you pretty much have to collect varified samples of the various species to make comparisons. Photographs help with respect to the color clue, but you really need to have a piece of the stuff in hand in order to pick up on subtle differences in texture and density (weight.)

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   Mike, rosewood was featured as the Wood-of-the-Week over on the turning forum at WoodCentral last week. You might be able to bring it up on their archieves...or if you can't resurrect it, I can send you a copy of the draft. It offers some background tidbits and trivia on the Dalbergias.  

   
   

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   Edited 10/26/2003 1:10:54 PM ET by Jon Arno