Does anyone have any experience, either applied or academic, with Cladrastis kentukea (yellowwood)? I had a difficult time tracking down what species I was even dealing with when I bought the wood from an amateur sawyer/tree remover. It involved taking more time than I care to admit with talking to locals who called it “bird of paradise”; trekking through alot of wooded areas; and my well used and abused Audubon book.
The only information I have found to read about the wood (from Audubon) is that it has a “clear yellow heartwood, which turns light brown on exposure”. This has not been the case with the wood I have because I’ve been drying for almost a year and it is as canary yellow as the day it was cut and does not seem to be turning light brown at all.
Seems to be stable. It is ring-porous with pores occurring multiply, tyloses are abundant, and rays are clearly visible. Spectacular looking stuff. Any information that would help to quell my curiosity would be appreciated.
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I typed the scientific name into Google search and got the following page. Don't have time to investigate further, but there's bound to be some info worthwhile there:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&querytime=B&q=Cladrastis+kentukea+
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
This genus belongs to the legume family and yellowwood is the only species native to the US. There are about 3 or 4 other species of Cladrastis native to the Orient (China and Japan.)
Yellowwood has a rather patchy range from western Arkansas to eastern Kentucky and it's not plentiful enough anywhere to be a significant timber producer. The Cladrastis genus belongs to the acacia-like branch of the legume family, so it's a fairly close relative of the locusts. I've only seen samples of the wood and really haven't worked with it, but my first impression was that it seemed to be very much like black locust. A little softer and brighter in color than black locust, but with a similar figure. It isn't listed in any of my wood tech references, so I can't give you any stats on its shrinkage characteristics or durability, but most of its Acacia-like relatives produce rather stable and decay resistant woods.
One of its traditional uses was as a gunstock wood for long rifles...so, it apparently has good shaping properties and must have pretty good shock resistance. The 18th and 19th century gunsmiths who made these rifles knew their materials and I'm sure they wouldn't have selected yellowwood for this critical purpose on a whim.
Yeah, looks a little like black locust, in figure anyway. Alot brighter yellow, not nearly as hard (using my extremely accurate method of hardness testing which involves using a fingernail), and the pores aren't nearly as packed with tyloses so it doesn't have the "flash" of black locust.
I live in Western Kansas, so this tree is a little out of its range. There's a hotspot of them about 60 miles from where I live and I've never seen this tree anywhere except for there.
Gun stocks, huh? I have a couple of abused shotguns that are missing wood. I might try it when the 3" stock dries. I have about 400 bf, so I ought to be fairly familiar with how well it works by the time I use it all.
You've given me more info than I expected someone could give me, thank-you very much for taking time to look through your references. Unfortunately, I have some sort of sickness that disallows me from using red oak, hard maple, etc. I like trying unusual woods that often have no information readily available and sometimes I find out they don't have the best working properties either. Yes, my lot in life are the yellowwoods, the Russian olives, the sandhill plums, the red mulberries. Give me your weak, your sick, your ti...
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