Thread: Need Help Identifying Wood: Is This Gidgee?

Brad, I've only had brigalow from about 3 different trees, all from the same small area (western Darling Downs). The stuff I've had was similar to gidgee in looks, but coarser-grained. It had no distinct odour, as the others have said, and was very different to work with, quite a bit softer (though still plenty hard!), and turned very nicely, much easier than any gidgee I've turned. When fresh, the brigalow was a bit paler than any gidgee I've had, but most of it it darkened up pretty quickly to a colour similar to gidgee. Makes excellent chisel handles & seems to take heavy impact in its stride:
Titans rehandled.jpg

But there is great danger in drawing too many conclusions from such limited samples!

Cheers,

Ian, Brigalow out of the Downs is much lighter in colour and more open grained than the Brigalow from the Belt, mainly due to water availability.
In the far west the two grow side by side before the Brigalow drops off due to low rainfall and only Gidgee remains. In the centre of the Belt the two are very hard pick apart once sawn and dried.

Thanks Rusty - as I said, my observations are based on a very limited sample size and I don't doubt your assertion that they can be hard to tell apart, especially when aged a bit.

I've got bits of 'western rosewood' (Acacia rhodoxylon) & gidgee in my stash that I can't tell apart, they are much the same colour & pretty close to the same density. They are easy to tell when freshly sawn, the colour is quite different, but after 6 months of exposure to air it's a different story! Both have a pleasant odour when sawn, which is similar, but different enough to notice if you saw two pieces consecutively, but if I just sawed one or the other up a few months later, I would not be sure which one it was from the smell but the fresh-sawn surface would give it away....

Cheers,
Ian