Olive

[Den Socling]

I have a new candidate for hardest-to-dry-wood-in-the-world. A company asked if I could dry 4/4 and 8/4 Olive. I asked them to send a couple samples. One from Tunisia and one from Italy. Under the microscope they look like rock. Here's what Red Oak looks like.


 

Here is Olive from Tunisia with the same magnification.


 

Over the weekend, the pieces laying here on my desk cracked everywhere. Has anybody ever dried this stuff?

[AlaskaLes]

Wow!!
That's some tight grain.  I wonder how long those trees take to grow.

If you get a chance could you post a few pics of the wood grain in 1x magnification.
I'm curious what it looks like.

[Den Socling]

Not just tight but ornery grain!


 



 



 

[longtime lurker]

Havent tried to dry it but after a look at your grain pictures and the numbers... density, hardness, elasticity, rupture, shrinkage etc...

Did you work up a schedule with Moxon's for Ironbark? It's got that kind of look about it.

[Den Socling]

I did a lot for Moxon but Ironbark doesn't ring any bells. Is it known by any other name?

[Ianab]

I did a lot for Moxon but Ironbark doesn't ring any bells. Is it known by any other name?

Common name for various species of Eucalyptus, the harder ones...

[longtime lurker]

Neah, Ironbark is Ironbark - theres about 4 commercial species of it. It's probably the most commonly available of the seriously hard , dense, tight grained eucalypts so I figured it'd be the most likely one they'd have wanted a schedule for. Eucalyptus sideroxylon and Eucalyptus paniculata are the main two used for flooring so get some kiln time.

We use the old British schedule B or T2-C1 for drying, though normally my preference is to wrap freshly sawn packs in burlap and wet them as required to try and slow air drying right down first.

What it really looks like grain wise Den is some of the desert accacia species - Mallee, Gidgee, Brigalow.  They get sawn a bit sometimes for the specialty stuff... gunstocks, turning blanks etc... but I doubt there would be any commercial data for them... they paint them in end sealer, bury them in the garden, and water with the rest of the yard... then dig them up for air drying after a year to see if any have stayed in one piece. Seriously beautiful timber though.
Maybe some of those ultra dense tight grained African species - leadwood, ironwood, ebony etc might have published schedules that are worth a look at too.

Sorry I cant help more.

[Den Socling]

" they paint them in end sealer, bury them in the garden, and water with the rest of the yard... then dig them up for air drying after a year to see if any have stayed in one piece."

That's very interesting! I have a lot of Eucalyptus schedules. It's been 10 years since I worked with the stuff but I have pretty good records. I'll see what I can find. Thank you.

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

How dense is the wood?  Does it float in water?  Usually if it sinks about 3/4 or more, drying is very difficult. That is a density of .75 x 62 pounds per cubic foot or more. Wood itself is 1.5 heavier than water or about 95 pounds per cubic foot, but the air spaces in the cell drop the weight to .3 to .7 as heavy as water for most commercial woods