Hi Folks,
I realize this sounds a bit ridiculous but has anyone ever seen a floor which used solid Gidgee (Acacia cambagei) as the flooring material?
Thanks
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Hi Folks,
I realize this sounds a bit ridiculous but has anyone ever seen a floor which used solid Gidgee (Acacia cambagei) as the flooring material?
Thanks
I am willing to venture a guess that this has never existed. Even if you go back to a time before it was so highly valued, and the sheer economics of it weren't prohibitive, it seems very unlikely that a tree that small and that difficult to work would be used in this application.
Id love to see it if it exists though.
Although i would think its probably Tasmanian blackwood rather than gidgee (although some of the borders were dark enough for gidgee) i spotted this floor at a grand historic home in Kew, Melbourne called Villa Alba.
Attachment 427439Attachment 427440Attachment 427441
Hello Luke Maddux and fudo133,
Thanks for your thoughts. I have this dream/fantasy about getting hardwood flooring. If I end up doing it, the foundation of the house will first need to be repaired. Then, I would buy the most outrageous flooring that I could find.
In the past, several really dense woods have been sold as flooring. INPA parquet of Paraguay once sold Schinopsis brasilensis flooring. It may have also been the supplier of Bulnesia sarmientoi (now on CITES, Appendix III) and Libidibia paraguariensis. I own a few flooring pieces from each of these species but I do not know where they were sourced 10 years ago. Before 2008, flooring made from Zollernia paraensis ( very dense 1225-1325 kg/m^3)) was also available in Michigan.
So, Schinopsis brasiliensis (average density = 1280 kg/m^3) is my running favorite. I am poking around to see if some other bruiser woods might be available for flooring:
- Bulnesia arborea (Verawood, Guayacán, guayacán de bola ) from Colombia and Venezuela. (1150-1250 kg/m^3)
- Acacia cambagei (Gidgee) (1250-1340 kg/m^3)
- Bocoa prouacensis (Boco, Yzerhart) from Suriname and French Guiana (1250-1360 kg/m^3)
While Roupala montana is not nearly as dense as these others, it could make for a very nice floor.
OK, ideas??
Thanks.
I aways thought that gidgee would make great cordwood flooring. That way the size of the timber would not be an issue but you would probably need a concrete slab to affix it. In terms of Janka hardness Gidgee is certainly up there with the best in the world. We also have Rose Sheoak (Allocasuarina) which has a rating of 14 so it is not quite as hard as the gidgee with a rating of 20.
Gary.
Can't say I have even seen a floor from Gidgee, but wouldn't surprise me to see some in the old farms out west. I have been advised that a property with heaps of Ooline (Cadellia pentastylis) and has her kitchen cupboards and bench tops all made from it. I made her a pepper grinder from one of the offcuts in return for some on the visit the IWCS are planning in June this year.
Yeh more likely Blackwood, but wow, the grain and fiddle is amazing. I can imagine the knife makers and pen makers trying to get a floorboard or 2 LOL.
Wow! Gidgee flooring would be immensely expensive and difficult to execute!
It is very hard and heavy. It's the 3rd hardest wood in the world - woohoo!
Top Ten Hardest Woods | The Wood Database
Tools are blunted very quickly. Plus it' close grained density lends it to being not very forgiving of shocks etc. so it would probably crack readily too.
Lovely stuff for furniture, instruments and other items
V
There is, or was, a shearing shed out near Wilcannia with the Board made from Gidgee. Naturally polished every year with lanolin, it used to look a treat
Well it's the 3rd hardest in their database anyway. A lot of others talk about Buloke (Allocasuarina luehmannii) as being the hardest but personally I find it relatively soft in comparison to many of our desert hardwoods. There are many Acacias in Australia that would be similar if not harder, my favourite for hardest being Minirichie (Acacia grasbyi) but admittedly it could just be the embedded silica growing around the opal mines.
Some considerations also here in this link http://vcssolidtimberfloors.com/unde...-hardness.html
Hi Folks,
In the event that anyone is interested, I chose what I thought was the best possible flooring timber => Schinopsis brasiliensis. My criteria were
wood density
wood hardness
wood color
The density of 5 large boards averaged 1.28g/cc. Not too shabby. Janka hardness numbers are more influenced by marketing these days but the number is over 4000. As to color, the first picture is recently cut boards and the second is of flooring pieces that have been collecting oxygen and UV radiation for years.
Attachment 428519Attachment 428518
The boards look like Tigerwood (Astronium lecointei/graveolens/fraxinifolium) because the genera Astronium and Schinopsis are in the same tribe (Rhoeae) of the same Family (Anacardiaceae))
https://www.woodworkforums.com/image/...Zqf 1 sNa//9k=
Timbers like this are going away quickly. In five years, you will not be able to buy this species. A good supplier is INPA in Paraguay. They source it from Eastern Bolivia. I am not aware of any Australian entity importing from INPA Paraguay. Send them an email ...
INPA Paraguay
Ruta 7, Km 169
Caaguazú
Phone: + 595-522-43535
Fax: + 595-522-43537
e-mail: [email protected]
That will make a magnificent floor Runge!
Hi Runge, You might want to contact Russell at Paradise Timbers (Gold Coast). He mentioned a cost of $100,000 for a floor done some years ago.
Why not Cooktown Ironwood. Its available, got some cilour to it, durable ( ive seen sleepers on the Cooktown railway that looked pretty solid still- last train went down that line in 1890 or so) and well up there with the best in the janka scale. And.. the published number is for green timber. Never seen a number for seasoned Ironwood, I think maybe the ball bearing ricocheted. :)