brazilian redwood production at the hardwood mill

nice pictures of your mill. do they capture any of this latex for anything?do you get free wood for yourself?

Welcome to Lumberjocks Harry,

I travel to Brazil quite frequently. I have used and been around a lot of Massaranduba. It is some of the hardest and heaviest wood I have come across. Those are beautiful logs you have there. You are correct in saying that Brazil has become very difficult to deal with as far as lumber is concerned. You are definitely better off in Bolivia. For the time being.

Have fun and please keep posting.

-- Oldworld, Fair Oaks, Ca

Thanks for sharing pics of your mill & the process of converting the Brazilian Redwood to lumber. Very interesting blog.

Bill in MI

I do like to see pictures of beautiful wood. I may have to buy some decking or flooring to see what this stuff is like. IF I can find it. Looking forward to some more posts. I found some black to very dark brown Ipe in a hardwoods store. I bought one of the two boards and it was beautiful. Is Black Ipe common there?

-- Robert, so much inspiration here, and so little time!

Dear Robert, ipe is a wide range familiy, (called tabebuia spp) and there are more or less three different types:
- olive brown (darker)
- olive yellowish brown (beautifull design also called ipe lapacho, lighter color)
- ipe (also darker coloured) with a rough grain, but no design

I will look for some photos so that I can post them to show you the difference. All tabebuia’s have the same characteristics on strenghts, deformation etc etc

-- With regards from Harry Montana http://www.hardydeck.com

Hi Harry
Beautiful wood. Thanks for sharing with us. Do you replant with saplings when you have harvested the mature trees? I can’t understand why such beautiful timber would be used for decking when there are so many other (abundant) species available.
Jim

-- It always looks better when it's finished!

Dear JR45,
massaranduba (brazilian redwood) is pretty abundant over here (20% of all the trees is massaranduba, 25% is ipe and the rest are other species),
furthermore is the question not replanting but sustainable forestry directed towards selective cutting and best be compared with going to the hairdresser. Longer and more abundant is being cut and nothing is replanted. How this all works you can read on the company page on legal hardwood and its proceedures. This is by the way not some public imaging, this is really how it works. Bolivia has learnt well from Brazilian clearcuts.

-- With regards from Harry Montana http://www.hardydeck.com

Hi Harry
I very much appreciate your response and now have a far better understanding of how these trees are harvested and managed. Unfortunately, many of the headlines we see over here give us the impression that these scarce resources are being rampantly over exploited and threatened with imminent extinction. I hope you will share some further details of your operations in Bolivia with us all.
Best regards
Jim

-- It always looks better when it's finished!