Thread: What is Coachwood?

There a few different species referred to as Coachwood, try here - type in common name and 2 botanical names come up.

The Coachwood I knew as a youngster had a distinct and pleasant odour and woorked beautifully. Don't remember much grain patterning, however.

Famous, used in aeroplane frames, coaches, .... of course, hence the name, cars (woodies) The golden glow inside the Sydney opera house I believe is all coachwood (although they claim brushbox and plywhite birch from N NSW?
Fragrant denser than red cedar.
very rare now.
Greg

As an Australian rain forest timber Ceratopetalum apetalum used to be commonly milled. However with government protection of rainforests and avoidance of logging riparian areas it has become rare as a commercial timber. By repute, it's visually a fairly bland timber but as pointed out above it has useful physical properties.

I picked up an old painted timber kitchen off a mate from the 60's. When I broke it down and ran it through the surface sander it was Coachwood with some first class coloring. they cut most of it dowm to make stage coachs im told, but during ww1 & ww2 they used it for gun butts. I have a lithgow 22 with a coachwood butt. My manager tells me that in the 60's or 70's the made a lot of plywood out of it and it was easy to bend, thats what they used to make those modern styled plywood chairs from.

In 1969 I used coachwood marine ply to cover a "Flying Ant" sailing skiff that I built. In conjunction with Selleys 308 it's still going strong.
Great stuff to bend and the smell gets even better with hot towels to aid bending.

Cheers

I've put up a photo of a small coachwood board in the Marketplace section.
Greg

It might be fairly bland in figure but more than makes up in warmth and the ease with which it takes polish.
You can still see lots of it in secondhand shops. It was used extensively in furniture making usually sprayed a reddish colour to hide the variations in shade.
Cheers,
Jim