Purple Heart Fence Board

[Christopher K. Hartley]

From thread: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=47864


...This was an old weathered solid purple heart fence board given to me by a man in Florida.:)


Fence board? Fence board?! Someone built a FENCE out of purple heart?? Glad to see that wood will get a second chance to be admired a little more closely!


heh heh...that was my first thought too! :)

Yep Fence!:eek: The guy that gave it to me said it was quite a big one and he only wanted a single slat. It was too big to bring it home on the airplane so he cut it in three segments for me and I put it in my suitcase.:eek:

[Mark Pruitt]

Where is this guy? Maybe his next door neighbor has a cocobolo fence...:p

[John Hart]

Well....this is very understandable. I'm sure you've heard the age-old dream: "All I want is a nice family, a dog, and a nice house with a Purpleheart or Cocobolo picket fence".

....and a 22 HP snowblower.

.........and a monster mayo lathe.

................and a 4000 sq ft woodshop

[Jim King]

Chris:
It makes good shipping crates also.

[Andy Hoyt]

Hey Jim - We have a lot of exotic spruce and hemlock up here. Wanna trade?

[Brodie Brickey]

In Brazil its used as common construction material. The only problem with Purpleheart is it splinters a lot when turned. I don't know how many times I had problems with it. I'll take maple any day.


Although, if you can keep the purple color in your turning it looks great.

Regards,


Brodie
http://www.SmoothTurning.com

[Curt Fuller]

Chris:
It makes good shipping crates also.


Geez, that's disgusting. You probably get all worked up over a nice log of siberian elm or cottonwood.

[Gary DeWitt]

And they try to blame U.S. woodworkers for rainforest destruction!
I guess you have to use what you have at hand.
I heard there were miles of railroad taken up or redone recently somewhere in South America, and someone was smart enough to recycle the exotic timber that was used for the TIES. Hard to imagine what amounts to millions of dollars of exotic wood here in the U.S. used a RR ties!

[Jim King]

Exotic wood is a magic and very abused name. It is kind of like women, what is exotic to one guy is not to the next. Here in the Amazom the most looked for exotic is pine from incoming pallets from other areas of the world. People always comment on how destructive and uncaring the North Americans must be to use pine for pallets.

Purple heart , blood wood and most other species are used here for oil drilling platforms, road beds etc. with a very few being used for anything else. Until recently only three species were exported from this area of the Amazon, mahogany, Spanish cedar and virola. Finally the Chinese have come in and started buying three additional species for flooring. We in Peru are way behind the Brazilians in promoting new species and taking the pressure off the old standards.

Until a few weeks ago I as others were openly working and exporting 90% illegally with full knowledge of the authorities. Why ? Because a new forestry law was put into effect a few years back that was simply absurd. The law was designed by the WWF, paid for the US Agency for International Development and shoved down the throat of the Peruvian Govt. for a debt. Swap of ten million USD. The following web page says in general how great the new law is.
http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/where_we_work/latin_america_and_caribbean/country/peru/our_work/forests/index.cfm (http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/where_we_work/latin_america_and_caribbean/country/peru/our_work/forests/index.cfm)

Now some facts. The law prohibits cutting wood on private property without a logging license which costs $300 and specifies that logs can only be pulled out with a forestry tractor and clearly stating that a chain saw can only be used for cross cutting and not for cutting with the grain. This would make all of you that cut your turning blanks with a chain saw a criminal. ( More illegal harvesting ). On top of this lets mention that the typical landowner here has a monthly gross income for his family of less than $20. Where is he going to get the money for a license or a $150,000 skidder. That is one of the reasons that the WWF and others like them can make statements that the harvest is illegal. It is because the law is absurd and only in places like this can they push their way around and justify their existence to people who do not know facts to raise more money and continue to lie and live well. Until you can teach these people not to eat and have a forestry law that is usable you are going to continue to hear the wild stories about the destruction of the exotic ecosystems etc. which are the money raising buzzwords.

The forestry law prohibits harvesting stumps, burl wood , spalted wood , brach wood , wood in river beds and much more. The law also prohibits exporting unknown species. In Peru the largest university has identified 58 of the thousands of species that exist thus making the rest illegal to export but OK to cut for slash and burn, firewood or charcoal.


We have the largest tree ID program in the Peruvian Amazon and supply information to the Peruvian Department of Natural Resources so they know a little bit about what they have. The WWF has little if any.

Another part of the WWF law is that it is legal to make thousands of miles of roads to enter the famous concession program thus destroying billions of bf of timber but it is illegal to cut a tree under 16 inches in dia. for processing into a product. The 16 inch law is like waiting for a chicken to grow the size of a turkey before you eat it. It is not going to happen as many of the species simply never attain that size.
.
We live in Loreto State of Peru which is 40% bigger than Oregon but the harvest is one half of 1% of Oregons sustainable harvest annually. I just thought that fact would be interesting.

I have been working with the new government to develop markets for new species, change the forestry law and in general make things workable. I am happy to report that despite the wealth of knowledge of the WWF it will now be legal to cut wood with a chain saw , harvest stumps, limbs, spalted wood, river salvaged logs etc..

I could go on for many pages but with this I hope I have explained a little and I hope all you guys know that if you had the forestry law we have here you would all be illegal in something and the WWF would be down ere raising money to straighten you out.

[Dan Gill]

Thanks for the info, Jim. What is your job there? It sounds as if you are working in forestry or forestry consultation with the government.

[Jim King]

Dan: My real job is to play with wood.
www.exoticwoodworld.com (http://www.exoticwoodworld.com)

[Mark Pruitt]

Jim, I appreciate your sharing this. The WWF will never get one cent from me. Maybe it would be a good idea to take the postage-paid return envelope from WWF mailings and mail it back to the WWF empty, thereby costing them double postage and helping the USPS stay busy. Win-win scenario.

[Dan Gill]

Thanks for the link, Jim. Looks like a fun business. Want to swap some of that purpleheart for some "exotic" pine from Home Depot?:D

[Christopher K. Hartley]

Chris:
It makes good shipping crates also.That explains it!! Now I know why on Christmas, as a kid, I always wanted to play more with the boxes the gifts came in. The bigger the better.:D