Wood, Wood and More Wood

I hope you like these pieces - because on average, each one cost the lives of 28.3 gorillas.

Woods woods woods!

Firstly, the caption in the picture is entirely tongue-in-cheek. I have no idea how many gorillas made the ultimate sacrifice for these pieces, although I hope it was a lot less than 28.3 each - in fact I try to ensure it's precisely zero by getting my wood from responsible sources. Anyway, this is a selection of chess pieces I've made recently. Each piece is the natural colour of the wood from which it's made - that is, I didn't paint, dye or stain any of them, although it's possible I baked one of them in the oven to deepen the colour. Is it "natural" to heat wood to about 150°C for four hours? Well, just about, because these exact conditions could theoretically occur in a (naturally occurring) forest fire. That's right.

Anyway, the point is, wood is not always the boring yellowish-beige-brown colour everyone is familiar with. Assuming your computer doesn't have absurd colour settings, the colours you see in the picture are pretty much true to life. From left to right, you're looking at: lemonwood, Rio rosewood, cocobolo, banksia nut, ebony, boxwood (front), padauk (back), purpleheart, padauk/ebony/lime, snakewood, ebony, verawood, purpleheart, cocobolo, tulipwood, verawood, tulipwood, padauk, ebony, padauk, ebony, pau amarello, rippled ash. These woods vary wildly, not only in colour but in pretty much every other way. Check it out:

Lemonwood

Oddly enough, not the wood from a lemon tree. This stuff is reasonably cheap, easy to turn, fine-grained and takes a great polish. It's used as a substitute for boxwood, to which it bears more than a passing resemblance, because you can get decent-sized chunks of the stuff; whereas if you ask a timber merchant for a 2" square of boxwood, you get raucous laughter followed by a patronising lecture about moisture content. Try it!

Rio rosewood

Now, this stuff is so endangered that there are all sorts of laws against even trading the stuff - however, it is kosher to buy from stocks which were obtained legally, before the restrictions took effect. Rosewoods (of which there are several varieties) are so called because they have a fragrant smell, and Rio rosewood is no exception - turning it produces a fine brown dust which smells so yummy you want to gulp in lungfuls of the stuff. Unfortunately this results in a sore nose, violent coughing, reduced lung function and (if you do it enough times), some kind of horrible disease which has many syllables and ends with "-oma". Beautiful wood though.

Cocobolo

Also known as "Mexican rosewood". Cocobolo is one of those woods that has more in common with some kind of modern engineering composite than wood. It's so dense it sinks in water. It's so hard and abrasive it can blunt high speed steel tools in minutes. It's so fine-grained it can be polished to a brilliant glassy lustre. And it's so poisonous that just getting the dust on your skin can cause near-instant dermatitis (I found this out the hard way). Needless to say, the dust from cocobolo should not be inhaled, unless perhaps you're David Blaine and you need a new grossly unhealthy thing do to for your next "challenge". Cocobolo has no much natural oil in it that it's almost completely unaffected by water. This also makes it a real bastard to finish - it clogs sandpaper like crazy and varnishes don't dry properly on it. It's also practically impossible to glue. So why use it if it's such a chore? Well, it's gorgeous, isn't it.

Banksia nut

A seed pod which has loads of holes in, and therefore looks kind of interesting when you turn it. Disturbingly, the pod also contains a large quantity of fine brown fur. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Ebony

Woo hoo, ebony! I like ebony. Unlike most other woods, it doesn't smell nice when cut - it has a curiously cheesy, feety kind of pong. This stuff is as hard and dense and abrasive as cocobolo (see above) but not as oily, which makes it somewhat easier to work with. It doesn't really have a grain to speak of, except perhaps under very strong light. But it polishes to this magnificent lustrous magical jet black which I find irresistible. The big ebony queen in the pic has a base diameter of three inches - finding a crack-free bit of jet black ebony this big is pretty special.

Boxwood

Boxwood is the traditional partner of ebony in luxury chess sets. It's probably the finest-grained, most highly polishable wood out of all those in the picture, which is very surprising given that it comes from old Blighty. Unfortunately it's next to impossible to find in decent sizes - hence the presence of lemonwood.

Padauk

Padauk is an oddity among decorative tropical hardwoods, being abundantly available. You could floor your whole house in padauk timber and remain unmolested by guilt about the environment - although this might be small consolation when you realised you'd just halved your place's resale value. See, padauk is very red stuff. With exposure to sunlight, it loses some of its outrageousness and mellows to a reddish brown. Also, like many strongly coloured tropical hardwoods, it has a strong contrast between the heartwood (red) and the sapwood (cream). Two of the three padauk pieces in the picture are half heartwood and half sapwood. Also, it's lovely and soft and easy to work. Oh, and it's cheap. How cool is that?

Purpleheart

Possibly the second hardest wood to search for online - do a Google search of "purpleheart" and you get a load of nonsense about military decorations. The trickiest one to search for is ebony. I won't say what happens if you Google "ebony", but I will offer the following advice: don't try it at work. Or at someone else's place. Or if anyone else is present.

Purpleheart is a brownish colour when freshly cut. It varies; sometimes it goes a crazy, lurid purple within hours of being exposed to the light, and sometimes it stays a disappointing brown. In the latter case, you heat the piece to 150°C for a few hours and it goes crazy purple, although there is a fine line between "crazy purple" and "charcoal black". Other than the wonderful purpleyness, there's not much to recommend this wood. It's quite coarse-grained and doesn't polish that well.

Lime

Not really a turning wood - it appears here only as part of the only segmented piece, the lime/padauk/ebony queen. Why did I use lime? Well, honestly, because I didn't have a bit of maple the right size and shape. Lime is good for carving, though, because it resists splitting along the grain very well.

Snakewood

Probably the rarest and most expensive wood here, and possibly also the hardest and densest. It's called snakewood because of the wonderful mottly swirly grain patterns it has (sadly not that well exhibited in the picture), which are reminiscent of snakeskin. Awesome stuff.

Verawood

Another of my very favourite woods. This stuff is often called "lignum vitae", which it is related to and very closely resembles, but it's not technically the same thing. Very very oily, like cocobolo, and just as hard and dense. The sapwood is pale yellow (like in the picture) and the heartwood, when freshly cut, is a wonderful warm nutty brown. Leave the piece in the sun for a day or two and it goes this spectacular deep green. The grain is also beautiful, being full of herringbone patterns and random swirls.

Tulipwood

More precisely, Brazilian tulipwood - I believe plain old "tulipwood" refers to the wood of the poplar tree, which isn't nearly so exciting. Tulipwood comes from the illustrious dalbergia family, which contains so many fabulous woods - blackwood, kingwood, cocobolo, Rio rosewood and sonokeling (East Indian rosewood) - and it's not out of place in such grand company, with it's crazy raspberry-ripple grain. There are two tulipwood pieces in the picture. One is the bishop with a striking red/yellow stripy pattern, and the other is the queen, which has a much more irregular, flecked pattern containing yellow, pink, red, orange and deep purple. Wood, but not as we know it.

Pau Amarello

A lovely rich golden colour, easy to work and cheap. Definitely one to use for the light side of a chess set.

Ash

Lastly, a home-grown species. By no means a tropical or exotic wood, but surprisingly hard to work - had I been turning this piece blind (not a good idea, incidentally) I would have sworn it was something like ebony, although the absence of a cheesy odour would have given away the fact that it wasn't ebony. Well, if I'd been turning it blind and with a clothes peg on my nose...you get the idea. Takes a lovely finish and is surprisingly chatoyant - that is, moving it around causes it to catch the light differently, giving it a translucent, almost 3-D effect. The vertical stripes do make it look a teensy bit like the wood came from Homebase, unfortunately.