Tigre Caspi

[Kevin Kronewitter]

Any one know where I can find information on the wood Tigre Caspi. All I can find on the the net is that it is good for turning and flooring. Nothing about its hardness, resistance if used outdoors, etc...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Kevin

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Wow, tricky, I could find nothing...

I believe that the scientific name is "Zygia cataractae"
see: http://www.wolframalpha.com/entities/plants/zygia_cataractae/j5/17/pe/

You will probably have better luck searching on some of the local vernacular names
http://www.ildis.org/LegumeWeb?sciname=Zygia+glomerata

I did check some of the common names and some of the synonmys.

[Kevin Kronewitter]

I know! I looked through everything I could think of and came up with almost nothing. Thanks for links, I will see what I can find from them.

Kevin

[wayne booker]

Kevin,

There seems to be a real shortage of info about this wood, I know, I was scouring the web last year after I bought a piece from Woodcraft. All of what I've found written up about it is that it's a craft wood that's good for turning, easy to work with and takes a nice finish, bla, bla, bla.

I made a box out of it for a mother's day gift for my wife last year. The wood has a a weird grain structure and at least on the piece I used it's fairly wavy, changing direction in many places. When I sent it through the planer, the spots where the grain came to the surface and changed direction, that top spot was blown out with end grain showing. I used wipe on poly for the box and I guess it finished well, I didn't use any stains or oils on it. But I will say that I also didn't use any sandpaper anywhere on the box. I used my scraper and it was smooth enough to finish. The few pictures of this species I've found on the web doesn't really look much like my box other than the striping. The coloring seems to be darker on my piece.

I think you could expect to use Tigre Caspi as you would any other wood for the most part. I've attached a few pictures of the box I made. I wouldn't hesitate at all to do a project in Tigre Caspi. It's a great looking wood with a very unique grain.

Cheers!

Wayne
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[Kevin Kronewitter]

Thank you for the personal experience in using the wood. It sounds like I had better be ready to do a project with a hand plane in order to deal with the shifting grain patterns. In fact, it sounds a lot like it would be like using Birdeye Maple. Planes seem to be able to cut smoothly and thinly enough to not tear the wood up...at least if they are kept VERY sharp.

BTW, I like the box and the contrast. I personally love mixing contrasting wood. It gives a piece much more character!

Thanks again!
Kevin

[Richard Coers]

There were a lot of exotic wood sold for a while, that came through Woodcraft. They came from Peru. Jim King set up an operation down there to help the locals make money from the forest in other ways than slash and burn to grow drugs, or raise cattle. A very admirable venture. I do think they made up some of the names for the wood since they had never seen a commercial market. Really not dissimilar to the folks that name woods like Brazilian cherry, or Brazilian walnut. I really don't know where the program is today. Jim used to post quite frequently on Forestry Forum. His wife was struck by a motorcycle and was in a bad way for a while. Add that to government issues with trying to run his program, and it may have just been too difficult.

[wayne booker]

No problem Kevin, I'm glad to help. I'd like to see what you can do with it!

Wayne