[ soundtrack : ‘From The Morning’ - Nick Drake]
***
This week I’m doing a boring, little job; making new parts for patio furniture. Machine work only. The furniture is made of welded stainless frames and has wooden surfaces made up of dark wood ‘stringers’ screwed in place from behind / underneath; a look popular a decade or so ago. The customers have a huge ‘roof balcony’ (or whatever you call it in English) where my colleagues have changed the decking and I’m to make a shitload of stringers (trade term) — some long, some short — out of the leftovers. The flooring boards are of Ipe-wood and measure 25 x 140 mm in falling lengths, but I’ve started making the smaller parts out of the off-cuts first, before I start using the full-length boards. It’s expensive wood so I have to husband it carefully.
I’ve never worked with Ipe before. I mostly use woods that are sourced fairly locally (North-Western Europe, let’s say — Scandi Pine making up the bulk of it) so I really enjoy getting my hands on some dark, exotic hardwoods now and again. You will notice that I tactfully refrain from making any lewd innuendo here. This is a family friendly blog I’ll have you know.
I can understand why it’s referred to as ‘Brazilian Walnut’ — in colour and superficial appearance it does remind me of the Italian Walnut I’m used to, but when you start working it you soon notice the difference! Ipe is hard and oily, and has a lot of yellow deposits in its pores …
… to the extent that some pieces of wood take on a jaundiced, unattractive look:
Not that this will pose a problem for the intended use on outdoor furniture: the wood will weather and gray like teak, and probably last as long. But not a species suitable for fine furniture, then.
The grain is grown interlocked as you find in Sapelli-mahogany and other ornery species, making it difficult to achieve a smooth surface, although my still fairly sharp segmented cutterhead planer manages a decent surface on all but the most intransigent pieces. Hand-planing is possible, but not for the faint-hearted — sharp, steep & muscular being the nature of that game.
One characteristic trait of this wood is that it leaves a yellow, dusty deposit on the tools that work it; be it jointer, chop-saw or hand plane …
… and that’s why I wear a dust mask in the machine shop even tho’ I dislike it intensely — that yellow shit isn’t getting into my lungs!
When ripping the Ipe into thinner sticks, it shows little tendency to twist and bend, so an internally harmonious wood, it would seem, then.
***
As ever, Walter, you make an esoteric topic not only extremely informative but also accessible and fascinating. Thank you.
Got a bunch of ipe off cut strips from a cabinet shop years ago. Left them in my wife's car trunk for week or so. When I pulled them out the wood had turned a whole case of water bottles yellow. Odd stuff for sure.