Here in the US we tend to be a little ethnocentric. Call it American swagger, call it geographic isolation but we often forget that things are different elsewhere in this big world. So it is nice every once in a while to be shaken out of our preconceptions.
Last weekend I made a trip up to Hearne Hardwoods to pick up some 12/4 Walnut for the table I am building for The Wood Whisperer March Guild build. While the Hearne folks were tallying my total I noticed this column that looks like it came off some kind of temple. It was broken at the bottom so it looked like it was just snapped off in demolition. It is elegantly shaped and faceted and I can imagine that the structure it once adorned was a thing to behold. The curves evoke something from Asia and once I looked closer that was confirmed when I realized that the entire column was made from solid East Indian Rosewood!
…Paradigm shifted…
Just because it is exotic and hoarded in tiny parts for pen turning and the like here doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be someone else’s 2×4 construction lumber somewhere else in the world where Rosewood grows naturally.
Suddenly this digitally small world just got a whole lot bigger.
10 responses so far ↓
1 Brian Meeks // Feb 26, 2010 at 10:00 am
Very cool. How much was the piece in the picture?
2 Brad Sears // Feb 26, 2010 at 10:41 am
So true. I remember years ago that Indian Jungle Cock, a chicken whose neck hackle was used in British full-dress salmon flies, was considered so rare that its import was banned in the U.S. At the same time, I was working with some folks from India who laughed at the notion saying these birds were so common over there that they were used for everyday soup.
3 Mack // Feb 26, 2010 at 10:52 am
I had this similar epiphany when I was searching for some nice teak for a boat repair and had an Oriental friend laugh at me. It’s their Big Box “White wood.” Well, I’ll gladly send some of our Whitewood if you’ll send me your teak, rosewood, …
4 Bob Easton // Feb 26, 2010 at 11:25 am
Shall we assume that you now have the beginnings of a Buddhist Temple at home now?
5 Mike Holden // Feb 26, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Bob,
Went on vacation in Cost Rica and signed up for a mud bath – all the decking around the sauna the the four cooling pools were made of rosewood! The trees were growing where they made the sauna and pools, so they just cut them up and made decking.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of board feet of rosewood. Looked good too!
Mike
6 Shannon // Feb 26, 2010 at 2:53 pm
It wasn’t listed, surely a sign that I can’t afford it
7 Shannon // Feb 26, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Great comparison, I have been slowly working my way through my neck of jungle cock for the past 15 years. I don’t tie too many salmon flies anymore to actually fish, but more as gifts in a shadowbox or something.
8 Donna // Feb 26, 2010 at 5:04 pm
I was in Honduras a couple of years ago and they were using mahogany logs to fuel their wood stoves!
9 John // Feb 27, 2010 at 2:26 am
I had a Wood-mizer sawmill for several years and accumulated a large amount of wood that I could not sell. Consequently, we have elm gates around our pool and walnut railings on the tree house. People will definitely use what is readily available.
10 Eric // Feb 28, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Ha, funny you post this. Just last week I was out in the interior and came across a teak tree which had been cut down because it was threatening to fall upon a cemetery. Most of the tree had been taken but there was still a good 15-20 feet (if I remember right) of the base still there by the stump. It’s about 5′ at its thickest point, and maybe 3′ or so at its narrowest. That’d make a decent slab.
It’s not 100% that I can haul it away, although the owner of the land doesn’t seem attached to it at all. I started thinking how funny it would be to build a teak roubo…just because I could!