beefwood

I have been ofered a heap of beefwood to cut and have been told that it is a rare timber,is it saleable.I have to travel 800km to look at it and see if it is as good as the bloke said,he has told me that there is about 10km of windrows of timber and it is full of beef wood,it is in the lightning ridge area and I am not familier with timber in that area,no doubt there is other timbers in that area that are worth cutting in the same windrowes.
Is it worth looking at.
cheers Dave1963

i like beefwood. the bits i have tried have been nice to work with and look pretty good:)

Hard as nails, incredibly dense, polishes beautifully.

Weird smell.

Are you planning to use a chainsaw to cut it? If so, I'll go and buy some shares in chain making companies :)

IMHO it doesnt have the same lustre as the (allo)casuarinas and has that open grain like grevillias do:((. As long as the trees are still alive you should be able to get some nice wood out of it,:2tsup: wont be overly big bits though.:no: Any that are dead, I wouldn't bother with. You should be able to pick up better stuff than beefwood where you will be going:;
To clear things up, are we talking grevillia or stenocarpus?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ron Dunn

Hard as nails, incredibly dense, polishes beautifully.

Weird smell.

Are you planning to use a chainsaw to cut it? If so, I'll go and buy some shares in chain making companies :)

---

Ron, your'e not thinking of Bull Oak (buloke) are you?:?

I would be taking the lucas mill,may have to get tungston chain for slabbing.
cheers Dave1963

rowie, I once bought some wood from a reclaimed timber place that used to be in Abbotsford (Victoria). The guy told me it was Beefwood, and that's my sole source of knowledge about that timber.

Given your comment that Beefwood has an open grain, I think we are talking about two different timbers. The stuff I had was beautifully grained, but no pores worth mentioning. A slice of the plane left a surface like a mirror.

The timber I used was a dark chocolate in colour ... think Old Gold ... and had a yellowish streak in it like the colour of a Dingo. It did have an unusual smell.

Do you still think it was Buloke?

I bought some timber a few months ago from a bloke who included some beefwood with some silky oak I bought. The beefwood is a deep red with a finer grain pattern than silky oak. (looks like a finer silky oak timber only its deep red.)
I think this is what they normally call beefwood. I think it is hard to finish as it tends to bleed a waxy substance from what I have read.

Shane.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wattlewemake

I bought some timber a few months ago from a bloke who included some beefwood with some silky oak I bought. The beefwood is a deep red with a finer grain pattern than silky oak. (looks like a finer silky oak timber only its deep red.)
I think this is what they normally call beefwood. I think it is hard to finish as it tends to bleed a waxy substance from what I have read.

Shane.

---

That's the stuff!!!
Lightning Ridge should still be grevillea striata country. The guy's in our local club mill Beefwood regularly with a Lucas but any mill will do it - it's not that hard, just very resinous. The resin bleeds from the end grain for years but is OK on the face which is all you see in most flatwork - but impossible to avoid in turnings. A lot of people out here love using it and the look of it but I don't know if you'd see the same demand in the big smoke :shrug:

I love the stuff, the bits I have had over time have been very good to finish. I use wax over oil on bowls and I would be interested in some when it gets milled.

TTIT, thanks for that web site!

Looking at your samples and descriptions, I think the wood I thought was Beefwood was actually Gidgee.

Beefwood is a lovely timber, very resinous but great to look at, easy to split, seen it used as fenceposts (very long lasting), never ever burn it in an enclosed space!!

I've turned Beefwood, which is a Grevillia as TTIT says. I found it to be dirty dusty stuff that left a very tough residue on my tools. Have ambivalent feelings about it
A lot of the public seating in parliament House, Canberra is Beefwood.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dave1963

I have been ofered a heap of beefwood to cut and have been told that it is a rare timber,is it saleable.I have to travel 800km to look at it and see if it is as good as the bloke said,he has told me that there is about 10km of windrows of timber and it is full of beef wood,it is in the lightning ridge area and I am not familier with timber in that area,no doubt there is other timbers in that area that are worth cutting in the same windrowes.
Is it worth looking at.
cheers Dave1963

---

Did you end up slabbing it?

Some people have a dangerous allergic reaction to it - much like silky oak,

Dave newjon in the small timber milling forum has some beef wood pic s up I think its pretty bloody good however I ve not heard of a market for it but still 10kms of felled timber in time with be worth some thing storing stacking an freight will be the biggest killers

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Avery

Some people have a dangerous allergic reaction to it - much like silky oak,

---

Here in the NT it's called "blister bush" because of the reaction that some have with the sap .
Plenty of it up here ,doesn't grow very big ,about 2 -2.5 m tall and the trunks are up to 120mm round.

Kev