Rarest Wood

[Cortney Voegele]

PurpleHeart wood gets its name from its color-changing properties. It starts as brown but changes to purple when exposed to UV light. It is exceptionally challenging to work with and highly resistant to decay.

Known as the national tree of the Bahamas, Lignum Vitae is highly dense and laborious to work with. It is prized for its self-lubricating properties, making it an excellent choice for bearings. It is also endangered.

Dalbergia wood is known for its durability, density, and rarity. It is commonly used in sports goods and high-quality furniture. Working with Dalbergia wood can be hazardous due to its poisonous sawdust.

Once widely used in the production of musical instruments, Brazilian Rosewood has become extremely rare due to overexploitation. Its rich reddish-brown color and excellent tonal properties make it highly sought after.

Ziricote is a rare wood from Central America known for its striking dark brown color with black streaks. It is highly valued for its unique appearance and is often used in luxury furniture and decorative items.

Unlike most of the other trees on this list, sandalwood is not prized for its durability or hardness. It rates only a 1,690 pound-force on the Janka hardness scale. Sandalwood trees grow to about 33 feet tall. This is a partially parasitic tree that grows on the roots of other species of trees. You can find sandalwood trees on islands of the South Pacific and in Southeast Asia. Some farmers are now commercially growing sandalwood in Australia as well, which may help relieve some of the shortages and lower its price.

Cricket balls are still made from lignum vitae, when available, as are some tool handles, bearings, and mallet heads. However, its endangered status has forced many manufacturers to seek alternative options.

As the name suggests, purpleheart (Peltogyne purpurea) can have a greyish-purple or deep purple hue. It typically looks more gray or brown when first cut, but the color deepens and becomes more purple with exposure to UV light. Purpleheart is also known as Amaranth. This wood grows in Central and South America. These trees are most commonly found in the rainforests of Guyana, Brazil, and Suriname.

Bocote wood comes from a flowering plant that grows in Central America, South America, the West Indies, and Mexico. When first cut, this wood has a yellowish-brown hue, but this darkens with time. You can find Bocote with a variety of grains from neat straight lines to wild swirls.

Brazilian Rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) ranges from purple and red to dark brown in color. It may have unique streaks of yellow or other lighter hues. The grain features a distinctive spider webbing that adds to its beauty. This wood is durable and resistant to both insects and rot.

"The proof is in the pudding and these guys are the real deal. Amazing customer service, no compromises or short cuts, employees are efficient, and take pride in their work, and well worth the money. They reinvigorated our Teak furniture and Ipe deck in a couple days and I've never seen them look better. Their maintenance plan is a no-brainer moving forward as I have neglected these prized woods long enough. In a day and age where compromise and service is accepted, these guys buck the trend indefinitely."

Cocobolo (also known as Dalbergia retusa), can cost $9 or more per pound. Like other types of wood on this list, Cocobolo is threatened by over-consumption. The wood is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, an organization tracking the threat of extinction among a variety of species.

This wood tends to have very little visible grain, but it does have a lot of knots. That can make working with holly wood difficult, but the material is still regularly used for decorative wood details in things like furniture and novelty items.

Ziricote easily sells for $70 per pound. The wood is commonly found in Central America and Mexico, with the tree sometimes growing taller than 60 feet. Also called Cordia dodecandra, this wood shows a distinct, wavy pattern and sometimes features a purplish hue.

Sandalwood has maintained high demand across the globe for years, which pushes up the price. The wood has been the subject of international trade since the 19th century when European traders sold it to Buddhist temples in China.

With a typical price tag of $100 per board foot, ebony is one of the most expensive woods in the world. There are several types of ebony, but African ebony is one of the rarest. In fact, the African ebony tree population has decreased by 50% over the last three generations due to harvest exploitation.

Ebony is known for its dark coloring, but the wood also features a notably fine grain texture. Although the wood is typically used to carve ornamental objects, some reports suggest it has medicinal applications, including anti-fungal anti-inflammatory properties. The wood may also have benefits for people with diabetes.

Brazilian rosewood has a distinct reddish hue and uniform grain. The beautiful color makes it a popular choice for fine furniture and musical instruments, but restrictions on harvesting due to the threat of endangerment make this wood a very expensive material.

Although it shares characteristics with African ebony, African blackwood is a different species. The wood is a very popular choice for making musical instruments, but over-harvesting threatens that practice.

For those of you who follow my adventures, you know that I spent some time in Sweden last fall, but for those that that are new here, last September I traveled to Sweden to teach spoon carving and to visit museums. Sweden is a land of wooden objects and the land of my forefathers and mothers. My family came from Sweden in the late 1800's and settled here in northern Wisconsin. Much of my woodworking inspiration and influence comes from the traditions there. They were a wood culture. Most of the object for everyday use were made from wood. It's amazing to think about today when most of the objects we use comes from metal, plastic and clay. Wood is an amazing in so many ways. I'm always discovering new things about it and how it can be used. I believe this is very important to explore as we move into a new era. Some of my friends in the traditional craft world are calling it 'the wood culture renaissance' but lately I've been calling the 'the new wood culture'. Either term fits. I can't help but notice it when I see growing interest in green wood spoon carving and other wood handcrafts. More on that subject some other day. It deserves to be explored in more detail as it's own.

I've been reseaching a certain type of turned wooden box with a locking lid for some time. Mostly looking at the few boxes that can be found here in my area. Many folks don't realize this but there are more Scandinavian descendants here in Northern Wisconsin and in Minnesota than anywhere else in the entire US. So I've seen quite a few wooden spoons and varies wooden objects folks brought with them when they moved here. This type of box is not that common to see, but they are around and expensive if they are for sale. The thing is they were turned green, mostly. How? I've turned about 5 over in the past out semi dry birch. Tangential, just like the bowls I turn. The lids warp too much and they don't work out so well. How were these made? I traveled to Sweden to find out. If I could see hundred's of them I would hopefully find out.

I've learned that a large percentage of these boxes come from the area near and around Bors, which in close Gtborg, in the southwest. The Bors area was a very busy place in terms of the production of wooden spoons, baskets, woven sashes, and these turned boxes and was so for a hundreds of years. The customs records show that over 40,000 of these boxes left Bors annually. That's a lot of boxes. This is also a similar number with the other hand crafts that were being produced there. The region was really poor for farming and thus folks needed a way to make a living. The families were peddlers and traveled around selling and trading their goods. These objects were and are still very common all over Sweden. So it makes sense to see the same boxes turned in Bors here in Wisconsin.

Most of the boxes I saw were made from beech, very large beech. The rims of the boxes were parallel to the radial plane of the tree. This makes very stable wood. It's the same a quarter sawn lumber, slit or milled, doesn't matter. but to make a box thats 8-10" diameter you would need a pretty large tree. After looking at hundreds of boxes I found what I was looking for.

I did find and purchase two very nice antiques while on my travels. One was a box made in the 1750's and the other with the locking lid made 100 years later. So I had two great examples to use as reference. The lids actually twist and lock on the boxes, this is what makes them unique.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the world turning these at the moment, definitely on a pole lathe. I know my friend Robin Wood has as made them in the past as well as Roger Abrahamson, the only other professional pole lathe turner in the US that I know of. Sometimes I think I'm a little off my rocker, to travel across the world to see this stuff and then make it and sell it, or try to. There are more astronauts than professional pole lathe turners.

Every single wand is unique and will depend for its character on the particular tree and magical creature from which it derives its materials. Moreover, each wand, from the moment it finds its ideal owner, will begin to learn from and teach its human partner. Therefore, the following must be seen as general notes on each of the wood types I like to work with best, and ought not to be taken to describe any individual wand.

Only a minority of trees can produce wand-quality wood (just as a minority of humans can produce magic). It takes years of experience to tell which ones have the gift, although the job is made easier if Bowtruckles are found nesting in the leaves, as they never inhabit mundane trees. The following notes on various wand woods should be regarded very much as a starting point, for this is the study of a lifetime, and I continue to learn with every wand I make and match.

3a8082e126