Thread: Wattle used for interior furniture

It should be fine as long as ity been dryed to around 12 -14% MC i think its lovely stuff

It has got some lovely looking grain swirls, which is what got me thinking in the first place. Cheers.

Its beautiful stuff silver wattle, some stunning colours to it. Its a shame that its never caught on as a furniture timber. Many years ago well before i got into woodworking i saw an entire bedroom suit done in wattle for sale, always caught my eye. A friend of mine who has it as wall paneling in his house, said that the CSIRO tested it & found that it has one of the lowest percentages for movement once properly dry. The paneling was cut to 10mm thick & has been up for a few years now without any movement or cracking visible. I plan on using it myself just as soon as the local mill can get onto a good patch.
I've been using it as turning practice timber, i cut it green off our block then straight onto the lathe. I've been quite surprised how stable it is once turned. I turned the bowls quite thin & finished right from green, there's been little movement in them & only 1 crack right on a knot.
The really good thing with wattle is that they grow so fast straight & often don't live past 25 yrs before falling over so they are very much sustainable. Usually they are the first trees to pop up after a block has been cleared.

silver wattle is acctually noted as a furniture timber in a number of publications, however it is not as desireable as many of the other acacia species, such as in comparison to its cohabitant blackwood. I have cut quite a bit of it and when dry it is a tremendously hard timber. It can be difficult to work suffering grain tear and the like and despite it being resistant to warping once dry it often does warp considerably while drying. It was once renowned as packing box timber as it is quite strong and thin pieces will yield a higher strength and resistance to fracture than things like pine even when these are cut to a considerably larger dimension, thus making crates strong light and more compact. Although it is not one of my favourite timbers it does have its place.

Originally Posted by mathewfarrell

...We clear a lot of wattle at our place, ...........................Has anyone got any thoughts or experiences they can share?

There's 1160 species of wattle in Australia and they vary hugely in timber characteristics - would help to know which one you've got

Originally Posted by Travis Edwards

silver wattle is acctually noted as a furniture timber in a number of publications, however it is not as desireable as many of the other acacia species, such as in comparison to its cohabitant blackwood. I have cut quite a bit of it and when dry it is a tremendously hard timber. It can be difficult to work suffering grain tear and the like and despite it being resistant to warping once dry it often does warp considerably while drying. It was once renowned as packing box timber as it is quite strong and thin pieces will yield a higher strength and resistance to fracture than things like pine even when these are cut to a considerably larger dimension, thus making crates strong light and more compact. Although it is not one of my favourite timbers it does have its place.

the silver wattle ive used is almost the excact opposite of what youve described here travis ,softer than blackwood ,ive had no problems drying it and once dryed extremely stable and easy to use ,its just a lot blander than blackwood ,youre not thinking of black wattle are you ?

Cheers chaps. I'm pretty sure it's mostly silver wattle. I have noted that Blackwood trees don't look completely dissimilar—definitely one of those trees that's hard to excited about before you know what's inside.

Originally Posted by mongrell

the silver wattle ive used is almost the excact opposite of what youve described here travis ,softer than blackwood ,ive had no problems drying it and once dryed extremely stable and easy to use ,its just a lot blander than blackwood ,youre not thinking of black wattle are you ?

NO I am not, and most of what I have used has come from altitudes higher than blackwood or black wattle will happily exist. I most definetly know what silver wattle is and if you really want I can take some pics of the timber. The DENSITY of silver wattle is not extremely high but when dry the HARDNESS of the timber and abrasiveness of it are much higher. Yes as a rule the overall effect is softer than blackwood and yes the colour can be quite bland (generally a pinkish colour hard grain with a slightly yellower softer section of the grain.) I use it as wedges for axe handles as for this it is very good. The grain is quite plain but the plainness can make it interesting. And yes once dried it is extremely stable but what I have cut and dried has suffered from distortion during drying, generally twist, but this could have been a bit due to lazyness on my behalf, but it has distorted more than other timber I have cut. I as said find that it also suffers from grain tearing as do most of the acacia species until extremely dry, I say this in comparison to things like redgum, and other timbers which tend to take to planing at much higher moisture contents without tearing. As far as a timber goes I would not knock it and if I could get hold of a decent amount of decent sized pieces of it I would find some very good uses for it.

Just mentioning that there are a number of acacias that are commonly called Silver Wattle,these include Dealbata,neriifolia,retinodes,rivalis,and o'shanesii to name a few,hence using common names can be confusing.Always helpfull when the tree's provinance is disclosed,as this will greatly help with it's identification.Cheers