Brazilian Redwood...6970lbs per cord!

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Jutt77

Feeling the Heat
Dec 18, 2010
383
Bailey, Colorado
This guy I work with brought in a piece of Brazilian Redwood that he used to build an outdoor table. This piece is right at 8"x5.375"x1" but weighs right at 2lbs according to my postage scale at work...heaviest, hardest, most dense little piece of wood I've ever seen. And this piece has been kiln dried and stored indoors for over a year! I went to pick it up and dropped it because my brain was thinking it would be a lot lighter just looking at it .

I couldn't find a BTU chart referencing Brazilian Redwood but I'm guessing they dont burn too much wood for heat down in Brazil so I just did the math myself. Based on the dimensions above at 2lbs thats roughly 2lbs per 42 cubic inches (I subtracted the routed section out as well), which comes out to around 82lbs per cubic foot. Multiply that by 128 and you have 10496 lbs per cord!! Orange Osage comes out to 4845lbs per cord! Stuff is twice as heavy as Hedgewood, awesome! http://chimneysweeponline.com/howood.htm

EDIT: If I read that right, the ChimneySweep chart based the weight on 85 cu ft to account for air gaps in the stack. Based on that we're looking at 6970lbs per cord on the same chart. Still pretty dang good.
At any rate, its really expensive dimensional lumber so it would be crazy to burn and probably impossible to find for firewood here in the states, but one can dream...;)

Anyone else have crazy-exotic-wood-that-would-make-great-firewood stories?

6970lbs per cord!
brzredwd1.jpg


Piece was routed...thats some tight grain:
brzredwd2.jpg
 
You'd better hope he doesn't ask you over to move said table. It's gotta weight a few pounds.
 
lukem said:
You'd better hope he doesn't ask you over to move said table. It's gotta weight a few pounds.

Lol, I hear ya, I think he said the table weighs close to 300lbs.
 
Some of the exotic hardwoods actually have a fire rating. Meaning that there is a resistance to starting on fire.
 
Looks like there is a whole 'nother world of wood we don't know about. I didn't calculate how much a cord of water weighs, but most of these are 30% heavier by specific gravity.

http://www.morlanwoodgifts.com/MM011.ASP?pageno=76

Scroll down about 1/3 for heaviest woods.
 
Jags said:
Some of the exotic hardwoods actually have a fire rating. Meaning that there is a resistance to starting on fire.

Yea kinda like a cops knight stick! :cheese:
 
lukem said:
Looks like there is a whole 'nother world of wood we don't know about. I didn't calculate how much a cord of water weighs, but most of these are 30% heavier by specific gravity.

http://www.morlanwoodgifts.com/MM011.ASP?pageno=76

Scroll down about 1/3 for heaviest woods.

Thats an interesting read, good stuff
 
Hi All, My son gets Greenheart wood from where he works. It is very dense, it weighs at least 1!/2 times what oak weighs, easiest wood i have ever split. used it on overnight burns and it added 2 hours to burn time over oak. now the bad part, it is very splintery and according to the internet can cause bad infections. we burned about a chord of it with no splinters by being careful

http://www.woodmagazine.com/materials-guide/lumber/wood-species-2/greenheart/
 
We have greenhart and purpleheart piles installed at environmentally critical piers up this way. The suckers are so heavy they set themselves in the mud and require little work with the pile hammer. This is some of that wood that does not float...

An odd fact about greenhart piles, is that they will peal or split right down the middle if they top is not restrained with some type of band.
 
Common trade name is Ipe'. At least 65lbs/cubic foot.Lignum Vitae is still the hardest & heaviest known. Ranges from 83 to 89 lbs/cubic foot,specific gravity 1.32.Known since medieval times in medicinal uses,since the 18th century as marine bearings,pulleys,anything needing high strength & resistance to wear.Contains a natural resin thats up to 30% of its weight,until the 1970's was widely used in propellor shaft bearings & other assorted similar mechanical uses.I have a few tiny Lignum pulleys (actually look like miniature wooden spools that used to hold thread) that were originally installed in antique venetian blinds.Years ago it was used in guide blocks for band saws of every size & description.

I made a set for my saw from some small scrap pieces in about 10 minutes.They can be pressed right against the blade sides for making the saw cut truer & more accurately,the natural resin in the wood makes these last longer & run cooler than any other guides,either metal or graphite impregnated phenolic resin.Some antique clocks from a couple centuries back used Lignum in certain mechanical parts also_One of the worlds best woods for turning on a lathe,though its quite expensive & hard to find now.I have a couple hundred pounds of assorted blocks & slabs of the stuff,bought it years ago when it was still available & comparibly cheap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignum_vitae
 
Good fodder for an atheist! How can there be a god if he/she puts the best wood for burning in a tropical rain forest! Ugh- I'd reply "maybe he/she just has a twisted sense of humor:)
 
I used Ipe to do my deck, I don't think it burns....it's suspossed to have the same fire rating as concrete or steel.
 
smokinjay said:
Yea kinda like a cops knight stick! :cheese:

Anybody ever pick up a piece of snakewood? Now that stuff is DENSE! I've seen walking canes made out of the stuff, and I do believe they were made from that particular wood for more than just use as a walking aid. A blow dealt with one of those things would lay out a horse.
 
Thistle said:
I have a couple hundred pounds of assorted blocks & slabs of the stuff,bought it years ago when it was still available & comparibly cheap.

H-mmmm... Don't s'pose I can impose on a fellow woodworker to sell me a little bit of the stuff. I've been wanting to get some for my own band saw after I trashed the guides in a mishap. The Cool Blocks wear fast, and they don't fit my old Delta saw anyway - they are too small and need shimming. There is a guy nearby who had a lot of it for sale at one time, but he never seems to be open when I drive by his place.
 
BeGreen said:
I did our back deck and steps in bangkirai and it has a very similar clean, straight grain. Makes me wonder if this is something from the mahogany family, like cambara or bangkirai?
That looks very similar.
 
Ipe (Tabebuia) is also known as Brazilian walnut. Braz. rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) is another species.

Ipe is not a trade name, it's a common name. The name "Iron Wood" is trademarked for ipe, though there's like a hunnert different trees called "ironwood".

I have made bows from ipe and had contact dermatitis, as well as a sneezing allergy- which are not uncommon. Ipe is darker than Braz redwood or rosewood in general, though there's variation in any tree.

Edit- Brazilian redwood is Manilkara bidentata- still a different species than ipe.
 
Here's a nice plank of brazilian rosewood. I paid $1200 for it when it was in coffee table format. It is worth about $6000 cut up as guitar wood. It is the only piece of Danish furniture that I've ever seen that was solid brazilian rosewood. 48" long, 22" wide, and 1 1/2 " thick. The legs are perfectly quarter-sawn wood that are big enough to make dozens of guitar bridges for classical guitars, and thousands of guitar bridge pins for steel-string guitars. Maybe some chopsticks, even. Or combs, or hair pulls, or anything but firewood. This wood is so beautiful I go down to the shop every now and then just to caress it.

Please do not burn any brazilian rosewood or I will cry for weeks. It has been on the endangered species list for decades and is the premier guitar making wood. If you have brazilian rosewood and are thinking of burning it to stay warm, I will personally fly to your house with my saw and get you some real firewood in exchange for that heavy, oily, perfumy smelling wood you got stuck with.
 

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That's what 500 yrs of over-harvesting will get ya.I have about 50 lbs of random odd blocks & chunks,useful for small turnings,inlay,knife handles etc.If memory serves paid around $1/lb with UPS shipping some 20 yrs back,was offered $500 for the box last year.Think I'll hold onto it a while longer.Purchased 30lbs of striped (less high figure) snakewood & 90 lbs of then-scarce Pink Ivory for a buck a pound the same time.Unless I cant buy groceries next month,its not for sale.
 
Thistle said:
That's what 500 yrs of over-harvesting will get ya.I have about 50 lbs of random odd blocks & chunks,useful for small turnings,inlay,knife handles etc.If memory serves paid around $1/lb with UPS shipping some 20 yrs back,was offered $500 for the box last year.Think I'll hold onto it a while longer.Purchased 30lbs of striped (less high figure) snakewood & 90 lbs of then-scarce Pink Ivory for a buck a pound the same time.Unless I cant buy groceries next month,its not for sale.

Ever work any tulipwood? It's a dalbergia, but it is fairly cheap for a rosewood and works beautifully. Very attractive, at least to my eye. Goncalo alves is another dense wood that is very beautiful. One of my favorite bowls I've turned was a very simple bowl made of GA. It just looked so appealing, but I made it for a friend's housewarming party and I didn't have the time to turn a lesser one for him, so he got my bowl. lol Maybe I'll visit some time and steal it back, he'd probably never even notice. His wife might, but she'd blame him for using it to put trout flies in or something (prolly where it is right now anyway). Something about those really dense woods that you can bring to a high sheen just with abrasives and maybe a handful of dry shavings pressed against it while it spins in the lathe. Brazilian cherry can get shiny enough you can almost see yourself in it treated that way.
 
Thistle said:
That's what 500 yrs of over-harvesting will get ya.I have about 50 lbs of random odd blocks & chunks,useful for small turnings,inlay,knife handles etc.If memory serves paid around $1/lb with UPS shipping some 20 yrs back,was offered $500 for the box last year.Think I'll hold onto it a while longer.Purchased 30lbs of striped (less high figure) snakewood & 90 lbs of then-scarce Pink Ivory for a buck a pound the same time.Unless I cant buy groceries next month,its not for sale.

forget the last 500 yrs, just within the last 30 we've seen the decimation of these types of trees. Like BK points out. Brazilian is the premier wood for the guitbox, and when you can make 5 years worth of income from cutting down "just 1 old tree" then there is a game to play. Now, if you can make 5 yrs income with 1 tree, then think of how much you can make by cutting thousands of them. Even up here in the northern hemisphere we're wiping out a lot of the "desirable" woods for instrument building...like sitka spruce. who'd have thought you could cut down enough of them to make an impact? its happening and its a cycle that has happened before. The reason there are few white pines in the NE that are old? They all turned into masts for ships. Good thing someone invented the steam ship or there'd have been a lot of big boats with very small masts in those days.
 
Battenkiller said:
Ever work any tulipwood? It's a dalbergia, but it is fairly cheap for a rosewood and works beautifully. Very attractive, at least to my eye. Goncalo alves is another dense wood that is very beautiful. One of my favorite bowls I've turned was a very simple bowl made of GA. It just looked so appealing, but I made it for a friend's housewarming party and I didn't have the time to turn a lesser one for him, so he got my bowl. lol Maybe I'll visit some time and steal it back, he'd probably never even notice. His wife might, but she'd blame him for using it to put trout flies in or something (prolly where it is right now anyway). Something about those really dense woods that you can bring to a high sheen just with abrasives and maybe a handful of dry shavings pressed against it while it spins in the lathe. Brazilian cherry can get shiny enough you can almost see yourself in it treated that way.

Yes I have,one of the first things I did was a small trinket box for Mom over 25yrs ago.Dalbergia frutescens (according a couple very old books of mine) small somewhat scrubby tree found in eastern Brazil in the state of Bahia & Ceara.Very dense,it barely floats,closely related to Brazillian Kingwood which is found in same region.Kingwood & Cocobolo (whether Mexican,Guatemalan,Costa Rican,Nicarauguan etc) are too dense to float,both take very high polish due to their density,very fine texture & being very oily.Lots develop an painful allergy similar to ivy poisoning from Cocobolo dust/shavings.The few times I've worked with it I always wear dust mast,have dust collector/ air filter system going & shower afterwards.A bookcase Dad made me when I was in high school has a 12" wide shelf of GA.I've turned a little of it,responds very well straight from the gouge or scraper,very little if any sanding needed.
 
I have these lovely 2' samples sitting on my desk at work. I think I will turn the ipe into some bearings for the trailer I am building.
 

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Yes, I have been saving my leftover bangkirai scraps for a project at some time. Not sure where I will use them yet. It is a very tight-grained wood.
 
Battenkiller said:
Here's a nice plank of brazilian rosewood. I paid $1200 for it when it was in coffee table format. It is worth about $6000 cut up as guitar wood. It is the only piece of Danish furniture that I've ever seen that was solid brazilian rosewood. 48" long, 22" wide, and 1 1/2 " thick. The legs are perfectly quarter-sawn wood that are big enough to make dozens of guitar bridges for classical guitars, and thousands of guitar bridge pins for steel-string guitars. Maybe some chopsticks, even. Or combs, or hair pulls, or anything but firewood. This wood is so beautiful I go down to the shop every now and then just to caress it.

Please do not burn any brazilian rosewood or I will cry for weeks. It has been on the endangered species list for decades and is the premier guitar making wood. If you have brazilian rosewood and are thinking of burning it to stay warm, I will personally fly to your house with my saw and get you some real firewood in exchange for that heavy, oily, perfumy smelling wood you got stuck with.

Ohh, thats a nice piece of wood! (thats what she said?) Friend of mine has a early 60's Martin D21 with Brazilian Rosewood back and sides and it sounds glorious and looks as good as it sounds because of that grain pattern. Good stuff!
 
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