Acacia wood

[Mike Cooper]

I have a neighbor that is taking down an acacia tree that is about 4 feet in circumference. They offered the wood to me, but I have no idea how acacia would be for various things - flat work, turning, firewood... Any comments?

Mike

[Dan Cameron]

I haven't machined it, but I bought an acacia ukulele in Hawaii. Quite pretty.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

Free wood is free wood. Acacia is very nice (pretty) to turn, but it's really hard. Hard on your tools, and generally a hard wood. Ours has lots of grain variations, which makes it pretty, but hard to turn. I'd grab the whole tree.
Smokes well too.

[Jamie Buxton]

Considering your location, it is probably black acacia. I've built a headboard from it, and some cabinet pulls. It is a good wood. It is on the dark end of things, and has some golden chatoyance. I bought mine dry (from MacBeath), so I don't know about drying it.

[Clisby Clark]

Well, God said for Moses to use it in making the Ark of the Covenant. Must be pretty special wood for God to spec it for a job!

[Georg Zudoff]

Hello, you're right, acacia smokes enough well. The firewood from acacia burns almost without ash, burns very long time too.

Georg.

[Charles Lent]

If you are planning to have it sawed into lumber you had better find a sawyer who is willing and has large enough equipment to do it for you. That's a big log by most portable sawmill standards. You may have to truck it to a big sawmill and this will get expensive.

Charley

[Randy Gazda]

If you are planning to have it sawed into lumber you had better find a sawyer who is willing and has large enough equipment to do it for you. That's a big log by most portable sawmill standards. You may have to truck it to a big sawmill and this will get expensive.

Charley

If I read the original post correctly, the tree is 4' in circumference not diameter. I think most bandsaw mills can handle that.

[Barry Richardson]

From what I understand there are many varities of Acacia, (the most widely distributed species of tree on the planet, I recall reading) like there are many varieties of Eucalyptus. Among these, there is a wide variety of difference in color and qualities of the wood. For example, Here in AZ, Willow Acacia, is a common landscape tree, the wood is rather soft and walnut colored, Shoestring Acacia wood is soft and boreing, Sweet Acacia is hard as nails with white sapwood and redbrown heartwood. So I imagine it would be important to know which variety of Acacia your dealing with.