Thread: Macadamia

Very pretty timber with a prominent medulary ray but it cracks like crazy, sealed or not. Comes down to what size pieces you are content with after the cracking stops

Originally Posted by TTIT

Very pretty timber with a prominent medulary ray but it cracks like crazy, sealed or not. Comes down to what size pieces you are content with after the cracking stops

or you can turn natural edge bowls whilst green then let the Mac wood do its thing.

The drying can be managed but as Vern mentions at the moment we do not know enough about how to best manage drying for maximum return. Many of the grevilleas, suffer the same fate & in fact all in the Proteaceae family do.

"As with other members of the Proteaceae family, the wood has wide medullary rays which provide this recognisable ‘oak’ appearance, but also form zones of weakness and during drying can provide sites for splitting."

DAF did a research project to assess value adding to a by product of the Mac nut industry, trees past their use by date in terms of nut production, or to be cleared for higher yield producing varieties or to manage yields on existing orchards via thinning. Its estimated that there are something like 700,000 trees potentially available for removal. WSQ members produced turnery items from DAF supplied billets of Mac wood from a production nut farm, as part of that research.

Well, thank you for that advice Gentlemen I'll have a play with it green and not be too upset when it falls to bits.. Phil

Have a look at google images . Looks to be well worth the trying .
Ted

Originally Posted by pommyphil

Well, thank you for that advice Gentlemen I'll have a play with it green and not be too upset when it falls to bits.. Phil

Phil, there are some examples of turned items in the research paper at this link http://era.daf.qld.gov.au/id/eprint/...opewell%29.pdf