Popular Furniture woods
Rosewood
Rosewood refers to a number of richly hued timbers, brownish with darker veining. All rosewoods are strong and heavy, taking an excellent polish, being suitable for flooring, furniture, turnery, musical instruments, and wooden chess sets (black pieces). In general, supplies are poor through overexploitation. Some species become canopy trees (to 30 m high), and big pieces can occasionally be found in the trade.
The pre-eminent rosewood appreciated in the western world is Dalbergia nigra, Brazilian rosewood (now CITES-listed). It is also known as Rio rosewood or Bahia rosewood. This wood has a strong sweet smell, which persists over the years, explaining the name "rosewood".
Another classic rosewood is Dalbergia latifolia known as (East) Indian rosewood or sonokeling. Other rosewoods can be found in tropical America, Southeast Asia, and Madagascar. About a dozen species of the large genus Dalbergia, are recognized as rosewoods.
The woods of some other species in the genus Dalbergia are notable, even famous, woods in their own right: African Blackwood, cocobolo, kingwood, and tulipwood. The Indian souvenir trade tries to sell objects made of Dalbergia sissoo (sometimes stained purple) as if they were rosewood. The wood of some other species is usable for toolhandles, at best.
The timber trade will sell many timbers under the name 'rosewood' (with an adjective) due to similarities in figure. A fair number of these timbers come from other leguminous genera: one that is often mentioned is Machaerium scleroxylon.
Rosewood In musical instruments
Because of its density and strong resonance, Honduras rosewood, Dalbergia stevensonii is a favourite choice for makers of marimba and xylophone keys, although many such instruments are not made of this wood for reasons of cost or durability in outdoor playing environments. Brazilian rosewood is (was) a popular wood for guitar fingerboards, and acoustic guitar backs and sides. However, due to its protected status and spiraling prices, Indian and Madagascar rosewood are being used extensively in its place. Rosewood is also used in limited quantities for clarinets; the various qualities of rosewood give the tone of a clarinet made of it a richer, darker sound than is generally obtained from traditional clarinets made of mpingo wood. Also, rosewood is occasionally used to make oboes, especially in chamber orchestras where less projection is needed (grenadilla has much more projection). Instruments from the violin family sometimes use rosewood for their tuning pegs, fingerboards, tailpieces, and chinrests.
Teak
Teak is used to make outdoor furniture, boats, and other things which require resistance to the elements. Teak is used for outdoor furniture because of its natural durability in extreme weather conditions and because of its relative rarity. Being more expensive than most other woods, teak furniture has become something of a status symbol. Not only is it common for a teak bench, chair, or table to last 70 years standing out in the elements, it is also common to pass down such furniture to future generations as an heirloom.
more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teak_furniture
Woods from Brazil
Jatoba
Jatobá (Hymenaea courbaril), also known as Brazilian cherry, is a tree common to the Caribbean, Central, and South America and Brazil. It is a hardwood that is used for furniture, flooring and decorative purposes.
Jatoba or brazilian cherry is a very hard wood measuring 5.6 on the Brinell test or 2350 lbf on the Janka scale, approximate measurements of hardness. For comparison, Douglas Fir measures 660 lbf, White Oak 1360 lbf, and Brazilian Walnut 3800 lbf on the Janka scale.
Jatobá is a huge canopy tree, growing to 30 m in height, and is indigenous to the Amazon rainforest and parts of tropical Central America. It produces bright green leaves in matched pairs, white, fragrant flowers that are pollinated by bats, and an oblong, brown, pod-like fruit with large seeds inside. The fruit is considered edible although hardly tasty; one of its common names, "stinking toe," is used to describe the smell and taste of the fruit! In the Peruvian Amazon the tree is called azucar huayo and, in Brazil, jatobá. The Hymenaea genus comprises two dozen species of tall trees distributed in tropical parts of South America, Mexico, and Cuba.
Ipe
ipê, one of the common names for trees in the genus Tabebuia and their wood
Tabebuia is a neotropical genus of about 100 species 1 in the tribe Tecomeae of the family Bignoniaceae. The species range from northern Mexico and the Antilles south to northern Argentina, including those on the islands of Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) and Cuba.
Tabebuia serratifolia (Yellow Poui, Ipê, Pau d'arco, Ipê roxo, or Lapacho) is a commercially farmed hardwood notable for its extreme hardness and resistance to fire and pests. Its inner bark is used as a treatment for fungal infections.
Tabebuia serratifolia (Chonta or Yellow Poui; syn. Bignonia serratifolia Vahl, Tecoma serratifolia (Vahl) G.Don 1) is a tree native to forests throughout Central and South America. This plant is grows up in the Cerrado vegetation of Brazil.
The bark of Tabebuia serratifolia contains more than 20 active compounds including lapachol, quercetin and other flavonoids. It is one of the largest and strongest of tropical forest trees, growing up to 150 feet tall while the base can be 4 to 7 feet in diameter.
Species in this genus are important as timber trees. The wood is used for furniture, decking, and other outdoor uses. It has a fire rating of A1 (the highest possible, the same as concrete) 2, and is denser than water (it sinks). It is increasingly popular as a decking material due to its insect resistance and durability. FSC-certified ipê wood is now (as of 2007) readily available on the market.
It has been broadly used as ornamental tree in landscaping gardens, public squares and boulevards due to its impressive and colorful flowering. Many flowers appear on still leafless stems at the end of the dry season, making the floral display more conspicuous.
The bark of several species is used medicinally (particularly the Inner Bark of Tabebuia impetiginosa also known as Lapacho or Taheebo). Its main active principles are lapachol, quercetin and other flavonoids. The inner bark is dried, shredded and then boiled making a bitter or sour-tasting brownish-colored tea. It is also available in pill form. The herbal remedy is typically used during flu and cold season and for "curing" smoker's cough. It apparently works as expectorant: by promoting the lungs to "cough up" and free deeply embedded mucus and contaminates.
Ipe Exploitation
The demand for ipê has risen dramatically in recent years, especially in the United States. By the 1990s, numerous environmental organizations working on preservation of the Amazon Rainforest reported that about 80% of logging in the Brazilian Amazon was illegal. The Brazilian government has confirmed this figure, most notably in a ‘leaked’ report from the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, the Secretaria de Assuntos Estratégicos (SAE) or Strategic Affairs Secretariat, in which it was confirmed that five times the amount of wood sanctioned to be cut from legal Amazon concessions was being exported and that numerous staff of the environment agency, IBAMA, were taking bribes. In one Greenpeace report, The Santarém Five and Illegal Logging — A Case Study, five companies were reported to be logging illegally in the region around Santarém, Pará. At that time exports from that region were most notably going to the Netherlands and France. Ipê was among the illegal exports.
Much of the ipê imported into the US is used for decking. Starting in the late 1960s, importing companies targeted large boardwalk projects to sell ipê, beginning with New York City Parks and Recreation (“Parks”) which maintains the city’s boardwalk, including along the beach of Coney Island. The city began using ipê around that time and has since converted the entire boardwalk — over 10 miles (16 km) long — to ipê. The ipê lasted about 25 years, at which time (1994), Parks has been replacing it with new ipê. Given that ipê trees typically grow in densities of only one or two trees per acre, large areas of forest must be logged to fill orders for boardwalks and, to a lesser extent, homeowner decks.
A Rainforest Relief report, Deep Impact, stated that average yields are 76 board feet per acre (44 m³/km²) of FEQ (first export quality — FAS four-side-clear) grade ipê over seven feet (2.1 m) in length. Typically, wooden boardwalks are composed of 30,000 to 40,000 board feet (70 to 90 m³) per city block. For New York City’s 10 miles (16 km) of boardwalk, this would yield an estimate of 83,360 acres (337 km²) of Amazon rainforest logged.
Sucupira
Pau Ferro
Pao Ferro or Pau Ferro (Caesalpinia echinata) is an exotic tree in Bolivia. Its wood is used for making fingerboards for basses and electric guitars. It has a similar feel and tonal qualities to Rosewood but has a slightly lighter colour.
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