What's in a name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
                    -William Shakespeare
                    Romeo and Juliet

Inspiration can come from the strangest places can't it?  The inspiration for this post came from someone who, I'm sure, wasn't trying to sound condescending or annoy me.  He failed on both counts.  Maybe, despite his claim of 30 years of woodworking experience, he was just ignorant.  Maybe it was more along the lines of an elitist air of superiority.  Anyway, he didn't actually get under my skin quite as much as I have made it sound so far.  Just a mild irritant, the kind that makes you want to slap them just on principle.

So, just what am I rambling on about anyway, you ask?
Wood, of course.  As you may remember from a previous post, names of wood can be a little confusing sometimes.  First, there is the actual Latin name (listing genus and species).  Since most of us don't speak Latin, you don't see that used much.  Granted, that would be the most precise method of doing it, but what are the chances that we would actually learn all of those Latin names? Will people really remember that they prefer their furniture be made from Acer saccharum instead of Juglans nigra? And how many of you recognized those as hard maple and walnut?  Right.  I had to look it up myself. So we use common names like red and white oak, maple, and chestnut.  As we have already seen, that can have its own issues.  If you just say it is oak, the question is if it is red oak or white oak?  If it is walnut, is it American black walnut, English walnut, or Italian walnut? If American walnut, is it east or west?  Then there is mahogany.  As I noted earlier, the name mahogany can mean several different trees.  While almost all of them are related to each other in some way, there is at least one example that is not.  Philippine mahogany isn't related to the mahogany tree at all.  It just kind of looks like it.  It still gets called mahogany, but mahogany it technically is not.  That's just a common name that it gets sold as.  You may have already known that (and if you are a faithful reader, you did).  Did you ever wonder how many other examples like that there are though?  Well to tell the truth, I don't know.  This is partially because I'm still running into new examples of it myself and partially because you can also always run into regional variations.  Think of soft drinks.  On the east coast they are typically called soda.  In the midwest, it's pop.  Go down to the southern (perhaps more southeastern) states and it's Coke. 
  Thirsty Person: "I'll have a Coke."
  Vendor: "What kind of Coke do you want?"
  Thirsty Person: "Mountain Dew"
Then the CEO of Pepsi rolls over in his grave (and he ain't even dead yet).

 So just how common is this?
 Well, here's a non-exhaustive list: (Botanical name: common or trade names)

Brosimum, rubesces: Bloodwood, Satinae, Cardnalwood

Cordia spp.: Bocote, Anacahuite, Canalete, Cupane, Laurel, Peterbi, Salmwood, Siricote

Guibourtia spp.: Bubinga,  Essingang, Ovang, Kevazingo, Waka

Dalbergia retusa : Cocobolo,  Granadillo, Funera, Palo Negro, Nambar, Cocobolo Prieto.

Diospyros dendo: Gabon Ebony, Kayu Itam, Toetandu, Sora, Kayu Lotong, Black Ebony, Kayu Maitong

Diospyros celebica : Macassar Ebony, Kayu Itam, Toetandu, Sora, Kayu Lotong, Black Ebony, Kayu Maitong

Grevillea robusta : Lacewood, Southern Silky-Oak (Australia), Kawilia (Tanganyika)

Pterocarpus soyauxii: Padauk, Mbe, Mbil (Cameroon), Ngula, Bosulu (Zaire)

Peltogyne paniculata: Purpleheart,  Amaranth, Palo Morado, Morado, Tananeo, Pau Roxo, Guarabu, Violetwood.

Astronium graveolens: Goncalvo Alves, tigerwood, Brazilian Koa, zebrawood

Hymenaea courbaril: Jabota, Brazilian Cherry

Tabebuia Bignoniaceae: Ipe Brazil, Amapa, cortex, Guayacan, Flor Amarillo, Greenheart, Madera negra,       Tahuari, Lapacho negro, Ironwood™, Pau Lope™ , Brazilian Walnut

Millettia laurentii: Wenge,  Panga Panga, Dikela, African Rosewood, Congolese Rosewood, Faux Ebony,

Microberlinia: Zebrawood, Tigerwood, Zebrano, Zingana

Confused yet?  Then there is rosewood.  We will get to that another day.   So I guess the next question would be why all of the names?  Granted some of them are pretty obviously regional and probably specific to the dialect of the language of the region of the person talking about it (or at least the dialect of the person who sold it to the supplier).  Some you may notice have a common English name and a country, such as Brazilian cherry.  Where did that come from? It's not related to the American tree we call cherry. It tends to remind at least some people of cherry though.  So if you have this really nice hardwood to sell to the U.S. that nobody here has ever heard of, how would you describe it?  Perhaps by using a hardwood that it sort of resembles that people here are familiar with?  Then add your country's name to it so that people will know that it isn't quite the same thing?  I think that kind of makes sense from a marketing perspective.  The names do get messy though. So what is one to do? If the piece looks good and the wood has the properties to function sufficiently for the task at hand, how much does it really matter to you?

 

Focus on wood - Walnut

Ah, walnut.  A beautiful wood and a nice wood to work with.  It probably shouldn't surprise you to hear me say that, seeing how often I use it.  Walnut offers a wide array of possibilities in terms of look, some of it quite striking really.  As a tree, there are 21 different species that can be used as timber, growing from Europe to Japan and from Canada to Argentina.  When we talk about walnut in woodworking, we are almost always referring to a black walnut.  Now from there, it will vary by region.  Typical examples being American black walnut, Claro walnut, and European black walnut. American black walnut comes from the eastern part of the U.S. and Canada. Claro walnut comes from the western part of the U.S. and Canada.   Each of these black walnuts will vary in color and grain a bit, but all have similar properties.

Walnut is hard, dense, and tight-grained.  It is used for furniture making, propellers, and prized for gun stocks.  In fact, if your rifle or shotgun has a wood stock, you can bet it is walnut.  No other wood is really used.  It was popular in the past for moldings and trim in houses.  In fact at the beginning of the last century the tree was being over harvested because of that purpose.  All styles run their course though (and then often come back. Remember bell bottoms coming back?  Starting to see 80's fashions return too.  I'm still waiting for day-glo to make its triumphant return).  Walnut was considered too dark and a bit dreary after a while in terms of use for trim and moldings around the house.  People started preferring golden oak.  This probably helped the survival of the tree a great deal.

The heartwood of walnut is a dark, tawny brown and is affected by how the lumber is dried.  Most is kiln dried which leaves it with a more muted brown color.  Air drying the lumber, however, will produce a deeper brown with some purple hues to it.  Hmm. The air dried sounds more interesting.  So why is most of the walnut kiln dried?  That's pretty simple really.  You can kiln dry lumber in a matter of days or weeks.  When you air dry lumber, it takes about one year per inch of thickness of the board.  And in the meantime, you get to go out once a month or so, disassemble the stack of wood, rearrange it, and then stack it again in a different order to keep the drying even.  Sounds like fun huh?

Walnut also produces a great deal of figured wood.  The most commonly used is walnut burl.  The picture up top has a walnut burl lid.  Walnut burl is the root of the tree.  You can also get walnut burl from, well. burls, that grow on some of the larger limbs.  Walnut burl is coarse and has a wild grain that goes just about every direction.  While this can present a bit of a challenge for woodworking, the results are often quite striking.  While walnut burl may be the most common, finding striking grain patterns are not all that unusual in walnut.  Basically, any time that the tree doesn't grow straight or is placed under some sort of stress, it will result in some sort of figuring.  The front of the box at the top shows an example of such an occurrence. While these results make working the wood more difficult (because density and grain pattern start to change, so how the wood behaves while planed or routed can radically change over the course of inches), I find it to produce much more interesting results in the end. 

Enough rambling for now.  Time to go make some saw dust.....

Focus on wood - Mahogany

I was asking my readers what things they would like to learn more about. What kind of information can I provide them that they might not know anything about?  One response was to go into a bit more detail on the different types of woods.  Since each type of wood will have its own properties, I thought that might be a good idea to go into.  So we will start with one of my favorite woods to work with. Mahogany

Mahogany used to be simple.  Mahogany was, well, mahogany.  Now we have true mahogany, African Mahogany, Philippine mahogany, and even a New Zealand  mahogany. So do we have true mahogany and a bunch of fake mahogany knock offs?  What's the deal? 

Well, let's start with true or genuine mahogany.  What is genuine mahogany is actually not the mahogany that made mahogany famous a century or so ago.  The mahogany that mahogany famous is actually Cuban mahogany or Swietenia mahagoni.  But since Cuba has tended to over harvest it a bit and that stcky little trade embargo that we have with them, Cuban mahogany is about as scarce as gnats in a windstorm.  Next, we started calling Honduran Mahogany, or Swietenia macrophylla, genuine mahogany. They are close cousins, very close in fact.  Both Swietena mahagoni and Swietenia macrophylla are from the Meliaceae family. Well, now those two particular species are grown in several areas of the world.  They are the national tree of both the Dominican Republic and Belize.  This means that we can't really distinguish them by country of origin and now days, we don't.  To be called genuine mahogany, the wood must be from the Swietenia mahogany line.  It doesn't depend upon where it is grown.   It looks like this:

It is moderately dense and hard which makes it well suited for fine furniture.  Buyers love mahogany for its even grain structure and its beautiful color. The picture above shows fresh cut genuine mahogany.  It will darken considerably with age.  Woodworkers love working with mahogany because it is very easy to work with.  It carves and turns well, holds clean edges well, and doesn't burn when you put it within 3 feet of your tablesaw (like say, cherry).  One thing that more thing that most people don't think about or know about genuine mahogany is that it has very good decay resistance.  This makes it an excellent choice for outdoor furniture.  Ok, I'm sure some of you laughed a bit there.  I'm guessing it went along the lines of, "yeah sure.  I'm going to pay for a mahogany table and chairs then just leave it out on the porch in the snow."  Um, yeah.  It does well outside.  At least compared to many other woods, say like red oak.  With a little care and maybe a cover like  you put on your BBQ grill, it will last for many years out there.

Next there is what is called true mahogany.  True mahogany is any timber from the Meliacae (Mahogany) family.  This applies to Khaya (African Mahogany) and Toona (Chinese Mahogany).  A picture of Khaya is shown below

http://www.paxtonwood.com/ExoticHardwoods.aspx

Philippine mahogany isn't mahogany at all.  It is not a part of the Meliacae  family at all. Rather it comes from th Shorea family and is also known as Luauan.  It is still allowed to be called Philippine mahogany by the FTC, but the Philippine part is mandatory.  You can't just call it mahogany.  It works entirely differently and even has a distinctly different smell to it when cut.  When worked or routed it smells kind of like black pepper (with the same effect on the nose).  It was probably first called mahogany because it does resemble mahogany in appearance, but the similarities end there.  It is only allowed to still be called mahogany at all because it has already been referred to as mahogany for so many years.

Well, until next time......