It’s like I’ve died and gone to wood heaven. I posted here a few months ago about my move to Central America and decisions on leaving behind power tools and going with hand tools. I got some great advice on how to stay active in the hobby and simply letting go of some aspects of woodworking to enjoy the adventure.
HOWEVER – after discovering a local woodworker here in El Salvador this afternoon, I about lost it. He had three barns full of stacks of planks of more hardwood slabs than I have ever seen in one spot. He says local farmers just bring him trees and he mills and stickers it to age. He builds his own furniture and sells it on the local market: Solid mahogany coffee table – $50. He had entire HEADBOARDS made of solid Cocobolo. $150. He had slabs of Guanacaste (I think some people call this Mexican Walnut, but I’m not sure – it is beautiful wood though) that measured 10 feet x 5 feet x 4 inches thick. One piece of wood – not joined together! He made dining room tables out of the solid slabs and charged $400 for them. He sold me 16 board feet of guanacaste for $5. He has several boards of cocobolo that I plan on going back for but they wouldn’t fit in my car. He had a hard time understanding why I would want the unfinished wood, but I explained to him that I enjoyed working with it and he shrugged his shoulders.
He didn’t have much left, but he was willing to sell me cocobolo for $0.50 per bf. He had teak wood, eucalyptus, guanacaste, walnut, mulberry, laurel, jatoba, tempisque, etc. There were at least a dozen names I didn’t recognize – one was almost flourescent yellow and one was blood red – beautiful wood. Most of them he sold for about $0.30 per bf. AMAZING!
A couple of questions now before I go hog wild on some of this wood:
1. He is “drying” the wood in his barn for several months, but much of it is as thick as three or four inches. Nothing is kiln dried here, and I have not been able to find a kiln in the entire country (construction lumber is imported, and furniture is built with green wood – quality is miserable but the wood is beautiful). Can I just buy boards and dry them myself? I don’t mind waiting several years before I touch the wood. If so, anything I should do to help the process and avoid mold and mildew?
2. He had some amazing figured wood, but some of it had some slight mold around the edges (we do live in the tropics). Is it worth buying the piece and trying to treat or remove the mold or should I simply steer clear all together?
3. He said that some of the wood would twist as it dries (he mentioned Eucalyptus specifically) but said that he never had problems with guanacaste wood shifting, warping, cupping, or twisting as it dried. Have any of you worked enough with this wood to comment on its stability?
Thanks in advance! I wish I could take orders and start shipping it back to some of you – the beauty of some of this wood was beyond belief. Next time I go I’ll take some photos and try to post them.
Replies
I'll answer one of your questions... of course you can buy the wood and air dry it yourself. If you have access to FWW in print or on line #204 had a good article on how to stack/sticker/dry the wood.
with regard to the fungus issue, I think it needs to be killed (by heat or chemicals) to prevent further decay or, even worse, potential health/allergies.
good find, I wish you could send some boards up here! good luck
Jeff
I'm envious. But I may end up living in Costa Rica at some point in the more distant future, so I have something to look forward to.
Guanacaste is a common tree in Central America. It is a legume, related to acacias. Probably the closest relative among woods that we know of in the US is koa, from Hawaii. It's fairly lightweight, like koa, and has the nice grain characteristics that are often found in legumes. (The various rosewoods are also legumes.) In Guatemala, at least, it's commonly used in construction for doors, trim, etc.
I have a small piece that I picked up in Guatemala. It resembles mahogany in appearance and heft, with some interlocked grain. But it's more ring-porous than diffuse-porous; the annual rings are much more prominent than in mahogany.
-Steve
Forgive me, I'm a bit hazy on the memory. But I recall being told decades ago in my college years that; the English had gone into a central american country, convinced the men that farming was for women, real men cut down trees(for English ships), had them cut down the forests, took the wood and left. The centuries of farming tradition bit the dust and the people were left destitute. Don't have details, see what I can find.
Anyway, what a find! Not sure why he would be puzzled by you wanting the wood, he obviously values it himself.
Maybe you could help the locals start a small eco-friendly export business supplying your friends here. I work with a group that helps with donation of materials and labor for educational aid there.
Very smart, hard workers. Got a couple of kids that have worked with me for 4-5 yrs. They help me, I help them.
Btw, they love machetes. Amazing what they can do with one. I'd be curious to see what kind of woodwork they do.
Pete
Unfortunately, the wood here is beautiful, but the craftsmanship is rarely that great. I think it is a product of several factors: using green wood that later twists, bends, or cups and ruins an otherwise decent piece of furniture, lack of tools and resources by poor craftsmen to produce a nice finish (I saw some guys sanding a table top with an angle grinder... and then they painted on varnish with a ragged brush), and lack of education on quality techniques. In most cases woodworkers are more carpenter than artist, and the end product reflects that.
My wife wanted a bench for our entry way here and found an old rustic deacon's bench that she liked. The hand carving was actually fairly well done, but I cringed at the numerous nails that had been pounded into the piece to hold things together - very little actual joinery. It is decorative more than functional, and I have to remember that the vast majority of people will look at it and never see anything wrong with it, but finding craftsmanship to match the quality of wood here can be very challenging.
The machetes are great. In the countryside, very few men go anywhere without them. The guy who cuts my lawn prefers using a machete in some spots to the lawn mower because it is easier for him. I'd chop my leg off if I tried it.
"...the craftsmanship is rarely that great."
That's pretty much the way things are in Latin America. Everything is "good enough," but rarely any better than that. I think it's at least partly the result of the relatively low standard of living, but it can be frustrating sometimes. I've watched people repairing roads, and I want to go up to them and say, "You know, if you spent twice as much effort in fixing this, it would last ten times as long, and you'd save money in the long run." But that never seems to be the priority.
-Steve
This all sounds fantastic. You'll probably want to educate yourself on how to air-dry wood after it has been milled to workable thicknesses. I recall reading a rule-of-thumb of one year per inch of thickness, sealing the ends, etc., but there are others here who are experts in these matters.
It also sounds like there are some "social" opportunities in teaching the local craftsmen about joinery, tools, etc.
Loved your post...
I would just pay the guy the common days wage where he is from for his experiences with wood and learn from him! Money well spent.. OK, so ship the leftover scraps to me!
Jay, Down there, they probably don't have heaters to dry the wood on down in Winter, and depending on the elevation, even AC, so there is no point in drying the wood with a kiln below what we call Air Dry ~ 12% MC.
The mold probably formed while the wood was still green, before the surface started to dry. I can't remember the exact MC, but I think > 28% for decay to grow. Once you are down to Air-Dry, you don't have to worry about it unless it gets wet again. Just plane it off, then keep it dry.
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