The hardwoods of Australia

[bunya pine]

The I have just been to a book sale and found a book on Australian hard wood, printed in 1919. If you have a particular species you would like information on. Please let me know and I will send you some photos of the relevant pages!

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Ch

[Luke Maddux]

How broad is the scope? How many woods does it cover? Is it mostly focused on stuff for furniture and framing species or does it cover drylands stuff as well?

Cheers,
Luke

[bunya pine]

Luke

Attached please find photos of the table of contents.



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The second page details the uses of the various hardwoods.

Cheers stew

[bunya pine]

Some samples of the pages

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Cheers

Stew

[Sawdust Maker]

How about, I'm interested in all timbers with a botanical name starting with the letters A through Z inclusive :D

[bunya pine]

How about, I'm interested in all timbers with a botanical name starting with the letters A through Z inclusive :D

Hmmm A to Z ! Here's the index for you [emoji12]

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[richmond68]

Wow, how cool is that. The section on wood paving should be interesting, Australia at one point had the greatest area of wood paved roads in the world. Australian hardwoods were favoured for paving stables and roads and a lot was exported for that purpose, especially jarrah. So popular was jarrah that the Jarrah timber and wood paving company was established in 1898 for the purpose of buying up forest to cut and export blocks for roads to London. Remember that the next time you pay some exorbitant price for a bit of it.
Tell me you didn't get this from the book fair at Newcastle Uni, because if you did I'll kick myself for not going :doh:

[bunya pine]

Wow, how cool is that. The section on wood paving should be interesting, Australia at one point had the greatest area of wood paved roads in the world. Australian hardwoods were favoured for paving stables and roads and a lot was exported for that purpose, especially jarrah. So popular was jarrah that the Jarrah timber and wood paving company was established in 1898 for the purpose of buying up forest to cut and export blocks for roads to London. Remember that the next time you pay some exorbitant price for a bit of it.

I will send the relevant pages through shortly.

[richmond68]

You don't need to do that, there's a digitised copy on line for those interested:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015053668607;view=1up;seq=17;skin=mobile
or search google books for it.

For those that would rather see it in ink on paper Trove lists the Australian libraries which have copies.

[bunya pine]

Awesome ! It's good to see everyone has access to this information. Cheers stew

[richmond68]

With a rare book like that, the less you have to handle it the better. It's a treasure, keep it well.

[bunya pine]

With a rare book like that, the less you have to handle it the better. It's a treasure, keep it well.

I didn't realise how rear it is! I just had a look on the net. You would cry if you knew how much I picked it up for!!!!

[BobL]

I had a look though the on-lne version and while it looks to be a very interesting historical book, (and I would like to own my own copy) the amount of information it provides on each species is dated, qualitative and limited.
For example hardness is rated only in qualitative terms and much of the other usual hard data is missing. It does have some very good microscopy photos of cross grain but how many of use will have the opportunity or ability to utilise these and identification looking at plain flat grain images is notorious unreliable.

To see a more up to date book with lots more info on each species, distribution maps, hard data, and photos of more accessible identifiers like bark, flowers, seeds etc try "Forest trees of Australia" by the CSIRO.

[ian]

And there are, IIRC, 2 companion volumes

one on Softwoods, unfortunately I don't recall what the other volume covered.

But, give me a day or two and I'll ask the person I know who has copies of them

[richmond68]

You can find a bio on RT Baker at https://www.anbg.gov.au/biography/baker-r-t.html which lists a number of other books he's authored. Cabinet Timbers of Australia written in 1913 could be interesting to woodworkers with an interest in history, the plates alone are a great record of some fine craftsmanship. You can find this book online as well.

[Luke Maddux]

Oh, wow... That is a truly awesome book. What a great find.

Jealous!

Cheers,
Luke

[ian]

And there are, IIRC, 2 companion volumes

one on Softwoods, unfortunately I don't recall what the other volume covered.

But, give me a day or two and I'll ask the person I know who has copies of themthe other volume is Cabinet Timbers of Australia