Resawing , drying , dressing S. American hardwoods

[ellmoe]

  Being in Florida we are " touched " by Cent. and South America. Whether it is cheap ( in both uses of the word ) pine import killing markets, boa constrictors and walking catfish in the 'glades , or Brazilian peppers taking over drained cypress swamps, the influence is very apparent. There are benefits to , such as opportunities to work with exotic woods ( and string bikinis ! :D ). I have been approached about resawing , drying , and planing containers of plantation grown hardwoods. Several species are potentially involved , included are teak , purpleheart , and Ipe . I have planed Ipe before , strictly carbide knives , but have not worked with any of the other species. Pricing and capabilities are my biggest concerns , especially , but not limited to , kiln drying. I will be resawing square cants , for now the largest being 10 x 10's , most smaller , I believe . Products will be mostly 4/4 and 5/4 boards. The cants will be a few months old , so basically green. Normally , I try to air dry my lumber before putting in kiln , but customer is in a hurry to get into the marketplace . I recently bought a Idry vacuum kiln and have a Koetter , there will be production challenges with just them. Can anyone give some thoughts on how these woods will dry ? Will it be like trying to dry green hickory , cost prohibitive to go from saw to kiln , or any other challenges you can see ? To be totally truthful , I looking forward to playing with some purpleheart  myself. Thanks. 

[longtime lurker]

I've sawn and dried teak, assuming that its real teak thats been planted down there and not some other "teak".

Not bad sawing, firm without being hard but tends to carry silica depending on the soil it was grown in (like a lot of tropical hardwoods) so it can take the edge of a saw faster than usual. TCT or stellite would be the way to go: IMHO TCT is better with "hard" like Ipe but stellite is better if the issue is abrasive like silica laden teak.

Drying wise the teak was okay, I tend to conservative schedules but yeah.... no worries at all.
I suspect ipe and purpleheart will be similar to a lot of our timbers in that density range in that you need slow initial drying to prevent surface checking but thats just a guess based on density and shrinkage rates: let me know how it goes.
 

[ellmoe]

LL , thanks for the reply. I have read about the silica problem with teak , so I anticipated having to use stellite blades and carbide planer knives , but have no clue how much a problem this will be . I have some experience moulding S4S Ipe into RED, nasty stuff  ( dust , mostly ), definitely needs carbide . Thanks for the heads up on TCT for Ipe , I'll definitely look into it.
If this comes about I will post about it.

[customsawyer]

I did some Anigray (sp) from South Africa for a customer. Drying wasn't to bad but as you already learned had to have carbide to go through the planer due to the silica. I would want to do a test run for the customer before I committed to all of it. Most of the time I have tried to deal with anybody doing shipping containers of wood. They want you to do all the work, take all the risk and they get all the money.

[ellmoe]

Thanks Jake. Test run , for each species , is definitely going to happen . This is a new venture , they , as well as me , are trying to figure costs. How was your experience in drying the Anigre ?

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

Common name is Anigre, Other names include Anegre, Aniegre, Aningeria (and various spellings)
Scientific Name: Genus is Pouteria.  There are several different species in this group.  It is from Africa.

Silica is common in many tropical hardwoods.  The silica quickly...very quickly...dulls tools.

[customsawyer]

When you say quickly you are not joking. It took 5 boards to dull my newly sharpened HSS knifes to the point that they looked like a butter knife. Had to spend $1600.00 on carbide knifes to make the $1200.00 and change I charged the customer. : Tuition at the school of hard knocks is high.
Drying was not a issue. It was already dried to 12%. Since it was being installed in a cabin in Colorado the customer insisted on it being dried to 6%. So I did. As it was already at 12% I had no issues taking it down the last little bit. Wish I had more information but that is all I know.

[ellmoe]

Thanks , Jake. I have one set of carbides ( from planing Ipe ) , but will need more.

[K-Guy]

Ellmoe
Kiln Drying
For Teak.  Kiln schedule T10-D4S is suggested for 4/4 stock and T8-D3S for 8/4.

For Purpleheart. Kiln schedule T6-D2 is suggested for 4/4 stock and T3-D1 for 8/4.

For Ipe. Kiln schedule T3-C1 is suggested for 4/4 stock.

[ellmoe]

Thank you , K.