Thread: What Timber is this????

Does Red Iron Bark have a disctinct smell when drilling into it or putting it through the Thicky?

I don’t know about red but I have been using a lot of grey ironbark and I can’t say I have noticed a smell

I got a small amount of flooring from the old Camden High School, was apparently all tallowwood or Brush Box. One of the pieces is almost identical to the picture you've given, so my guess would be an odd bit of either (really odd, not sure where from in the tree, but hey). I'm also assuming that there were no oddball pieces that were laid as part of that floor. Was pretty heavy stuff and, to be expected for 60 - 70yo floorboards, very hard. No smell that I could pick though, although having been air dried for that long, it's possible that the volatiles had left the building.

I can’t see why it’s not merbau. As laid in the days before plantation grown timber dominated the market.

OK, apologies for taking so long to carry through, but today I pulled out what I know is a bit of Black bean (aka Castanospermum australe). I planed a fresh surface on it: BB back cut.jpg

And planed the end grain: BB end grain.jpg

There was no particular smell associated with sawing or planing the wood - it's been so long since I worked with BB I couldn't remember if it had a characteristic odour or not. This bit is at least 50 years old, but then your floor boards have been a long time out of the bush, too.

The face shot doesn't really nail anything down - a lot of woods could look like this. The end-grain shot matches the description here and the macro picture in Morris Lake's book looks pretty similar (he doesn't give a verbal description, hence the other reference). If you blow the pic up & compare it with a clean-cut sample of end grain of one of your bits, you should be able to establish if what you have is BB or not. If 'not', as I'm beginning to suspect, I have no idea what it might be...

Cheers,

I agree with Ian, very sure it is black bean. Heavy, quite firm with an acrid smell. Will make you sneeze a lot, not very good for the lungs. A greasy timber that will resist gluing. Can be successfully glued provided the joint is cleaned immediately before applying glue. I black bean for it's colour in my segmenting.

Jim

My gut feeling when I viewed the grain figure in photo 1 was to say its black bean but I'm more used to seeing it a greenish brown colour than the blackish brown in the photo. The photos in post #3 tend to confirm my pick. So I agree with IanW and PP - black bean. I have always been able to "taste" black bean when I'm cutting or working it as it tends to have an acrid metallic taste and the airways start to tighten up if not wearing my PARP.

High. Having looked at photos and read comments and having machined Queensland Black Bean and suffered in the mid 60's from its TOXIC dust, it is Black Bean.

It is extremely difficult to obtain now a days. Been heavily used in furniture and what is left is heavily controlled .

Originally Posted by nzhorsey

Does Red Iron Bark have a disctinct smell when drilling into it or putting it through the Thicky?

Yes it does have a distinct smell when cut, my Dad used it exclusively for fence posts

Having seen Ian's picture, I'd vote for it being blackbean and my tallow wood and brush box having a black bean stranger in the mix...

Certainly looks like Black Bean to me as well. I have a couple of cubic meters of it in my shed, when freshly planed it looks the same as your pics.

Ok guys, yeah it certainly does have acrid smell. It had a grooved underside so it was previously used as decking. When was the last time BlackBean was used as decking??? I can’t believe they don’t use this stuff much anymore. Every single piece looks amazing. I had a builder friend come by who had a look and asked what I used to finish it but told him that that is exactly how it looks out of the Thicky (THANKS CROWIE)E7378300-A877-403F-848C-2D87ED0A83A6.jpg. He couldn’t believe how good it looks. Anyway. Here is the finished product and I still have a few L/M of it in my shed for a rainy day. Here is what I did with it. 6DF8817B-B108-4B6E-BBE2-F7D5E741C2CB.jpgA144F26C-5FB8-4249-BF75-FFB0948E23FC.jpg3DF4BB14-BB02-4B1A-9D2F-72FA09CBCB2D.jpg

PS How good does the Blackbutt look in contrast. So it was just an open Carport. Weathertex Wood man on the front, surrounded/framed with the BlackBean, and Blackbutt on the inside.

Originally Posted by nzhorsey

When was the last time BlackBean was used as decking??? .....

I think it's been in pretty short supply for while, so I'd guess not for many years.

Originally Posted by nzhorsey

I can’t believe they don’t use this stuff much anymore. Every single piece looks amazing.

Well, it has two strikes agin it. One is that it causes pretty severe respiratory problems in some people, the other is that it was cut pretty mercilessly 50 years ago & as far as I'm aware, it was never a plantation tree, so there isn't a lot to be had any more. You need a big old tree to get sizable timber out of, they have a very thick band of yellow sapwood, which was sometimes left as a feature, but it isn't as durable as the heartwood.

Just another example of a wood that was used with little thought as to what the next generation might use.

Anyway, you've given it a whole new life to enjoy.....
Cheers,

Yeah, I agree with others here. Looks like blackbean to me. Beautiful wood, but just too risky. A good deal of those woodcutters back in the day came down with cancer-related illnesses. I've heard some people call it the asbestos of the woodworking world. Sometime back in the 1980's the dust it produced was classified as a known carcinogen. Pretty much every wood stockist I knew dropped it from their range after that.

Maton Guitars used it quite extensively in the 1960's for fingerboards. We still had some pieces in the racks when I worked there in the 1980's but I can't recall ever using it at the time. As I said though, beautiful stuff. Just not worth the risk (in my opinion).