Is this Jarrah?

[guerd87]

Hi all,

In need of some dense hardwood for some bandsaw guides, not having anything laying around I went out to the tip shop recycle center this morning and looked through the wood pile. Had a few old pieces what look to be stud wall framing. Heavy, dark colour and seems fairly straight. Only needed a bit but picked up 3 pieces approx 50x65x2.2m for $6 so i grabbed the lot :)

Have just cut the end off one piece and gave it a run over the Triton.

Is this Jarrah?

cheers,
John

[BRADFORD]

It looks like it could be, but I wouldn't swear to it.

[Claw Hama]

Could be, a little hard to tell from that piece but it could be Blue Gum or even some Red Gum or Red Mahogany they can all have those light patches.
I made a dining table for some clients once, it had Red Hog top, Red Gum legs and Jarrah rails and you were flat out picking any difference (They didn't)

[Willy Nelson]

Looks like Jarrah to me. Having said that, the range of colour in Jarrah is extremely broad from pink, to maroon, to almost chocolate.
Will
Jarrahland

[derekcohen]

I don't think it is Jarrah. The colour is close and it would be difficult to knock it back it on that area. However the black striations are suspicious - they appear too straight/long. Generally this would occur with more swirls accompanying it.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[guerd87]

Thanks for all the replies :)

When I cut it up some more I will try and get some closer pics. Its very hard! Can see why people say that some recycled timber is just to old and hard to use. Either that or I am just use to working softwoods ^_^

Taking to it with power tools is fairly easy, wish I had some better hand tools to experiment with.

John

[NCArcher]

Looks like redgum to me John. I have a lot of recycled redgum. Comes up really nice but can be quite splintery.

[Arron]

Red ironbark I reckon.

[orraloon]

In the eastern states any old resycled wood is unlikely to be jarra. That said any hard wood is good for bandsaw guides. Harder the better. On my old saw I used hardwood blocks as guides. Work like cool blocks. I used a few woods. Jarra was the first as I had read about it being used. I also used Ironbark and bluegum. I soaked the blocks in oil until required on the saw but perhaps you can get by without that and just wipe wax on the working end. If you can find a bit of lignum vite then all your dreams are answered. It has natural oil in it, is hard as nails and was used for bearings in heavy industry. Old lawn bowls are sometimes made of it.
Regards
John

[Claw Hama]

Tallowwood would be my pick, self lubricating and the tools love it while still being very hard. And plenty around.

[guerd87]

So hard in Australia. Sounds like all timbers pretty much look the same :(

Not having done much work with hardwood, do all the timbers here mentioned take glue ok? Just regular pva or will I need to use epoxy? I need to laminate some pieces together to form a large block.

[Claw Hama]

Generally they work fine with pva but in this situation it may not be strong enough. Worth a try I think.

[FenceFurniture]

Spotted Gum with Polyurethane glue should work pretty well. I've used that combo for making clamps and both components are very strong. Spotty is incredibly strong even in tiny little blocks.Easy to come by and very cheap.

[Claw Hama]

Sorry Brett can't agree with you on he poly, if you have a joint it has some strength but on flat surfaces it's not worth a cracker. I did some destruction test a while back and all even the cheap pvc's kept wood on the surfaces after they were torn apart. The only glue to fail was the poly.

[FenceFurniture]

I mustn't have pushed it as hard as you! :D You can change the poly for epoxy then or maybe Titebond III (which even Titabond says is stronger than poly)

[pmcgee]

On the subject on the bandsaw guides, my old bandsaw (36" .. 1" blade) had metal guides of some kind when I got it, that I soon realised had worn and I replaced with jarrah. But they wore fairly quickly ... cutting some pretty big pieces ... and I found I had some sort of mild(?) steel bracket about 10mm thick that felt slick almost oily in hand. I cut up and used that and they have lasted well.
Cheers,
Paul