I have a chance to do a little project adding a piece of custom cabinetry to a recently remodeled kitchen. The cabinets were made of Plantation Hardwood with a honey finish. My problem is figuring out what plantation hardwood really is and where to buy it. The wood sample looks a little like oak but more porous, lighter in weight and color.
Anyone know what this stuff is?
Thanks in advance,
Chuck
WoodChuck asks:
Whose plantation? At least one company grows a variety of eucalyptus in plantations, and calls the result Lyptus or some such. There are plantations for many types of wood, so without having a pretty good idea to start who is producing the wood, it's gonna be difficult to trace.
Google shows lots of plantation hardwood set-ups, including teak, but no Plantation Hardwood.
Charlie Self
"Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. " Adlai E. Stevenson
Many of the older rubber trees in Malaysia and Indonesia are being recycled into furniture. It does look a bit like oak but it does weigh less, or seems so when held in the hand. Much of the stuff for sale in stores like Pier Imports is rubber wood.
Is that actually true? I guess I need to go do some reading. My initial reaction is that rubber trees are /Ficus elastica/ and that those trees have pithy, spindly wood. I can't imagine one of them growing up to become something that would yield a timber that could be mistaken for oak.
Maybe real rubber trees aren't /F. elastica/, or maybe /F. elastica/ makes a much more robust tree when grown in its natural habitat. I don't know which or whether.
Silvan notes:
Well, reports on F. elastica range from 50 to 90 foot final neight, but the rubber tree that produces sap for rubber making is Hevea brasiliensis. Whole 'nother thing.
Grows as high as 125 feet, but are usually cut before the reach 80 feet and a
16 inch diameter (tall, skinny sucker, eh?). That takes about 25 years.The tree pays its way with latex rubber sap, so a lot of that cheap furniture is made with wood that is probably super cheap at its locale...it has to come down because of decreased sap production, thus is essentially a junk tree. A brief look: specific gravity from 0.46 to 0.52 (light middleweight); dries quickly, usually kiln dried right away because all sorts of fungi and insects find it delicious when green; low shrinkage; stable when dried; works very easily; steam bends decently or better and the bends are stable; splits when nailed. Peels easily to produce veneer. Hard enough for parquet or strip flooring, though its hardness has been compared to Europe's Scotch pine.
The supply seems to be increasing as a newer more productive type of rubber tree is being planted.
Charlie Self
"Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. " Adlai E. Stevenson
Easiest way to spot rubberwood is (usually) that it's made from narrow strips, laminated up. It's also quite a distinct timber from oak, if you know how to recognise oak anyway, Colour is similar to the lightest of oaks, but the structure is quite different.
When applied to teak, "plantation" is usually a shorthand for "Irreversible rainforest deforestation by the military juntas of Burma or Cambodia, supplied with faked paperwork". In this case though, my first thought would be rubberwood, one of the most sustainable of the tropicals.
OK, that seems quite credible, 'cause I sure can't imagine those crappy, pithy little stupid rubber houseplant things turning into oak-like stuff.
I did a google search myself. It seems that plantation hardwood is a classification based upon the trees being grown on a 'tree farm' for subsequent harvesting. There seems to be a bunch of cabinet suppliers providing a choice of Plantation Hardwood along with other common species with no indication of what species the plantation hardwood is. I went to the original supplier's web site only to find a single item in the species list as plantation hardwood along with Oak, Maple, Cherry, Alder and Birch.
The sample I have looks a like oak but is less dense and a little lighter in color.
Perhaps it's time to punt.
Chuck
I also seem to recall that rubber tree wood has some sort of resident fungus in it that normally stains the wood rapidly after cutting. It was relatively recently that they figured out how to kill this (and the bugs) in order to actually use the wood. Before this, the trees were burned after they were cut, to make way for younger, more productive plants.
Andy Dingley schreef
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