Flowering Gallinazo (Schizolobium parahyba) trees between Parrita and Jaco, Costa Rican Pacific coast. It is a pioneer species used for reforestation but the wood is soft and used for pulp, boxes, pallets. Beautiful flowers. Scarlet Macaws like to nest in them because they can find or make a cavity in the wood.
Our cocobolo is reseeding!
Cocobolo (Dalbergia retusa) takes a while to put up a main trunk. This still hasn’t done much, maybe 8 inches you can’t see. Mature trees get over 30 inches DBH (diameter breast height), and I’ve seen some 4 foot wide at the base. I’ve heard of them around 5 foot wide, but all turned out to be hollow! When I’d buy a load, I had to buy the branches as well, which is how I got into the thicker spalted shapes, to use that stuff up.
Cutting up the wood on our large locally made band saw, you often find small stingless bees and dark honey.
The big trees on accessible private land are mostly gone, but in the dry forest parks it’s often the dominant species.
Cocobolo rosewood logs sprouting
Not only will big cocobolo logs sprout, but if you dig up a cocobolo tree and move it, it will keep sprouting from the old location for several years. When we built our new store in Escazu, San Jose, Costa Rica, the earth moving equipment bumped into our cocobolo tree. Other trees might have died; the cocobolo tree bled red sap and recovered completely. Our friend Tommy has some cocobolo trees on The Ark Herb Farm in Heredia. A backhoe ran over his tree by accident, but the tree bounced back up and grew fine.
Seeds are fairly easy to sprout and have a good germination rate. The growth habit is somewhat bushy and the branches do not tend to grow straight.
I’m so happy about this…I work mainly with Cocobolo, a rosewood of Central America, and eventually learned that sometimes I was buying a highland variety. After some years, I’d found it twice, growing above 4000 ft elevation, and finally found some in seed. We planted some,and after only 8 years three are in seed!
This was formerly common in the highlands, but made great charcoal, and was over harvested. Took some years to find out, but it’s Dalbergia calycinia. Much as in love, perseverance and the Sudden Lunge sometimes pay off! My wife and the grandchildren of J. Thurber will understand…
The native nurseries at ITCR and EARTH will share in the bounty. And thanks to John and Carla for helping gather the seed for these, way up between Escazu and Santa Ana.
I gathered a hatful of soapseeds below a big tree in the lower pasture, turns out they’re great for doing laundry. Put the rind from 5-6 seeds in a cloth bag and toss them in with non white clothing, does 5 loads. I love the tropics!
Chumico (also known as soapseed, soap nuts, Florida soapberry) grows widely in Costa Rica’s Central Valley. Look at my photos to see the seeds, and I have saplings at my nursery, and free seeds at my shop next door. Chumico is the Costa Rican name. Kids here used to play marbles with the round black seed inside the rind. The scientific name is Sapindus saponaria.
Jana says “If you don’t live in Costa Rica you can buy them from http://maggiespureland.com/ also from http://www.laundrytree.com. They’re great, make the clothes very soft. They do turn whites a little beige. The soap nuts also seem to keep the inside of the washing machine cleaner…who knew?”
They don’t produce suds, but then you don’t need suds to get things clean.
Anyone want to guess what year this 4.5 inch square spike got hammered into the cocobolo tree? The tree kept grew another 1.25″ inches in diameter after it happened, and the bark healed over. No, sorry, can’t use growth rings to figure it out because tropical woods don’t have pronounced growth rings.
Since cocobolo rosewood (Dalbergia retusa) is such a dense, slow growing wood, this spike is probably pretty old. Anyone want to make a guess?
Cocobolo used to be used for fenceposts in Costa Rica. Almost all of the highland cocobolo went for charcoal. A whole bunch went to make some really ugly hash pipes. I just hate to see it get wasted…
These brush fires scare us – we have four drying rooms full of wood, not counting the sawdust and the stacks of logs. This is the second brush fire in two weeks. We used to put the sawdust in a pile outside the workshop. Not anymore. In 1999 the sawdust pile caught fire, and we couldn’t put it out. We emptied out our water tank on it; no luck. We hired a water transport truck and dumped that on it – three times. Finally we hired a backhoe and had it move the sawdust around while we poured water on. That did the trick. Took four days total.
I think we didn’t bother calling the fire department that time. Carlos, the private water guy can bring almost three times as much water as a public fire truck with its skinny little tank. And besides, he often gets there faster than the fire trucks.
One of the early articles in Fine Woodworking
I liked his attitude, but like most of us, I was a sucker for the Latest Thing, and ended up with a lot of stuff I’ve never used. Here’s what I do use.
3/8″ long and strong deep gouge, longish side grind. I went through a lot of Jerry Glaser’s gouges, but now they are out of production. Tried a bunch, and now like my Hamlet gouge from England, I think I found it at Crafts Supplies USA online, good catalog. ¼ is great too, but careful with the overhang or you can and will snap some –and these are not cheap!
5/8″ roundnose scraper, for the bottom of the bowl, and the inside should of a pot form, here it’s a light angled cut. Mine is a Glaser.
Shear scraper. An old roundnose with a long side grind on the left side, used tilted for a very light evening cut on the inside of an open form.
Parting tool. Sears makes a great one, narrow and thin, but too short for much of my work, so every few years I take an old Rockwell 14″ planer blade, grind a diamond profile and then a V tip, slightly skewed. Works for light shaping of the outside bottom curve.
1/4″ roundnose, for beginning the inside of an enclosed pot form. I have one from Sorby that has lasted years, holds a great edge.
Stewart armbrace handle, with straight cutter I have the offset tip as well, and almost never use it.. Great for stuff with an overhang of the tool under 6 or so inches.
Glaser 1″ skew, truing up the outside of a bowl if needed. Smoothing the curve.
Oneway Deep Hollowing System. For very deep bowls this is indispensable. Takes getting used to, and when I use it, I do a series.
3/4″ long and strong deep gouge, for roughing out bowls.
Slow speed grinder with pink 80 grit friable stone.
Add a flatter gouge for spindle work, and this is all you’ll need, IMO.
Sharpening – grind with a light touch and make shavings. If you can’t do it freehand w/o a jig, you’re not turning and sharpening enough!
This is Guapinol, or Hymenea courbaril, Stinking Toe. About 10 inches tall, a commission for the Lalapalooza people. The tree grew across the road form my shop, and was cut to build a house.
And now it’s Wood Trivia Hour! This species has a large woody pod holding flattish disclike seeds. Children take a corner of broken glass and twist it to make a hole for a finger, and lo, a ring! They also eat the powdery stuff around the seeds, which have protein and B12, used to be sold to kids as brain food, when diets here had less protein.
The paired leaves look like a cloven goat hoof, and are hard to tell from Purpleheart leaves, a close relative.
And “Gua” is an indigenous wood for tree, and a common prefix, guayacan, guachepelin, guanacaste,etc.
Woodturning in Costa Rica