Information on Paulownia Wood

[William Fourness]

Does anyone know of this wood, ever work with it, a resource to purchase some. Any information on Paulownia wood would be helpful. Thanks
Bill

Thanks for the help. I never heard of this wood before and had an offer to purchase several logs and remains of trees. To see if it would be worth my time and effort to salvage these and get them to use. But any one interested in some, the are in logs are in Virgina and have photos and contact information.

[Sam Kennard]

Try here. (http://www.paulowniawood.com/)

[Jamie Buxton]

Paulownia is technically a hardwood, but feels much more like softwood. It is very light, and easily dented with your thumbnail. Because it is so soft, I wouldn't use it for furniture, except perhaps for authenticity in Japanese traditional furniture. (It is called kiri in Japanese, and is one of the traditional woods for tansu.)

[Chris DiCiaccio]

I no longer have a source for paulownia as the dealer has since gone out of business. The owner ask me to build him a big paulownia box to hold a Kimono for his mom. He supplied the wood, which he said had been put through a process of soaking it in water for a period of time, which removed the sap and made it feather light. I had no problem machining it. Here are some pics of it. He requested no finish on it.
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[Roy Hatch]

I wish I could tell you where to buy it. In the past I've seen it for sale in sizes that would be appropriate for carving. (And that's probably why Japan has exhausted its supply.) I've seen it growing on Virginia's Eastern Shore and along many of the Interstates here on the East Coast. Take a look at the growing zones. Once you learn what they look like you may be amazed at how plentiful they are.
http://www.worldpaulownia.com/html/zones.html
I suspect that woodworkers in this country have not created a market for this wood because we have so many other woods that we see as more desireable. I would venture that many land owners see these as "trash trees."
At times I've heard that our Paulownia wood is shipped to Japan where it brings higher prices, although I can't verify that.
Roy

[William Bachtel]

Roy, almost all our prime wood is purchased by Japen, they pay more than we do, so we lose. We should be selling them our trash wood, and keeping the prime for ourselves, but money talks and bullscat wallks.

[Ken Garlock]

When we moved to our new place in 2002, LOML planted 3 little sticks of it that she had been nursing through the summer.

We now have 3 trees about 20 ft. tall with a 10 ft. wide canopy. How did we get the seedlings, they were advertised as fast growing shade trees on the back cover of Parade Magazine.

The local gardening wizard, Neil Sperry, puts them in the junk or trash category along with Bios D'arc, and fruitless mulberry. I think they are doing what we want, providing shade and wind break.

As far as soil conditions go, Paulownia grows just fine the the North Texas gumbo clay soil. Our soil is either sticking to your shoes and inch thick when wet, or during the summer it is hard as a rock and gets cracks in big enough to put your arm in. ( I may have heard some Chinese coming out of one of the cracks. :D )