Just a taste of the tropics – one of these pics is of some fresh-cut bookmatch albizia (mimosa) veneer, the other is a Jamaican Dogwood vessel my stepfather turned from a cutoff. 

Both of these are from a load of wood given to us by Bill Palmer, a Key West woodworker, when he moved to Cyprus (or has its name now been officially changed to ‘War-torn Cyprus’?  It will come as no surprise to y’all there’s romance involved in that move) – I suspect mostly these were pieces that he saved over the last 30 years, awaiting a project worthy of them.  The only reason this piece of the dogwood was cut off at all, was to fit it in the truck.  There’s one half-log of jaw-dropping ziricote that I’ll probably end up giving to some young whippersnapper woodworker myself in another 30 years or so – I doubt I’m ever gonna feel worthy of that one myself!

They counted rings in the dogwood, and estimated the tree at 4-500 years old.  Trees grow slow in the Keys hardwood hammocks sometimes – sandy, alkaline soil (and less than 6″ of it most places, over solid oolitic rock or coral), salt intrusion, all the adverse conditions that slow ’em up, but make for amazingly tight grain.

To me, the veneer looks like a big, goofy Dr. Seuss-type bird, looking down his beak at you.

Clay