Hi Steve,
I have already replied to Joel about IPE but since his "announcement" appears on just about every topic I can't quite remember which one !
I have just returned from Scotland where I was inspecting greenheart timbers imported from Guyana by Gilmour and Aitken. These are to be used on a windmill repair job in Barbados. G&A are set up to saw and plane greenheart, purpleheart and a load of other types of tropical hardwoods. It has been established by experience that it is easier converting greenheart timber by using a saw blade where the carbide tips have been worn down to a smaller size by the previous cutting purpleheart and so some experience is required when working with tropical hardwoods. The sawdust produced when sawing greeheart and purpleheart is not like the rough fibrous dust produced when sawing softwoods but instead is a fine dust that will cause lung problems and so water spraying is essential. "Shelling out" is a problem on straight grained tropical hardwoods and greenheart is prone to this form of detrioration but purpleheart is subject to spriral and cross grain and hence tends to hold together much better than greenheart. I saw some greenheart timbers that had been dropped on the keyside and as a direct result it should be noted that these timber baulks will split along the grain quite readily.
Greenheart does rot and we were a bit dismayed to find that where it had been enclosed in a sleeved joint that it had started to rot on the surface after a period of only 12 years service. The sap wood of greenheart is prone to rot. All the greeheart timbers that come out of Guyana are boxed heart in order to preserve the straightness of the timber baulks. Because Guyana lies between the 2 tropics it has no winter and 2 growing seasons per year and so the northern idea of using a ring count to establish the age of a tree does not apply or at least divide by a factor of two.
Regards
Ken Hume
Last edited by Ken Hume; 06/27/09 08:06 AM.
