South African hardwood?

[Lol]

Can anyone help me to identify some hard wood that I have been given? I have been told that it is South African but I have no way of verifying this.

The wood itself is close grained and a very distinctive bright orange in colour. The planks that I have include a two inch band of white wood down the length of one side. The planks themselves are around three metres in length and vary between about 40 and 70cm in width, about 3cm thick, (not sure if the dimensions of the planks are significant but it's probably best to give too much info rather than not enough.)

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Lol

[steve.cormier]

Sounds like maybe Paduak to me. I love this wood and have used it with wenge (believe it or not) to create some interesting boxes. I've never encountered white wood as part of it, but maybe they normally strip it off.

If it is Paduak, it starts bright orange then turns a deep dark red that's really beautiful.

[bridger]

padouk?

[Paul in MN]

I was in the Congo and in Angola and they were trucking out some good size logs that were quite orange in colour. I was told it was Okume, but Padauk as well is an orangeish (sp) coloured wood

Paul

[Phil Hansen]

Kiaat, Iroko or Tambuti are all Southern African hardwoods that can have orange/red/white colours. If it has a very strong and distinctive smell when scraped, planed it would be tambuti. Iroko tends to have more white than the others. HTH

[Lol]

Thanks to all of the contributers - looking at my wood and the options described I'm pretty certain that I've got about 9 sq meters of inch thick African Padauk, I feel rich!

Having said that, I also feel very poor as the guy who gave me this out of the kindness of his heart died suddenly yesterday. It's not a concern of the members of this group but it's just another reason why I'm keen to make sure that this wood is properly identified and put to good use.