Tropical wood · Southeast Asia and Oceania
Cananga wood
Cananga (Canangium odoratum, family Annonaceae) is a tropical timber from Southeast Asia and Oceania. Dry, its Janka hardness is 330 lbf (1,468 N), and air-dry it weighs about 23 lb/ft³ (368 kg/m³). The figures are from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 579–580.
Other names, by country: Fereng (Thailand), Ilang-Ilang (Philippines).
Key numbers
- Janka hardness, dry
- 330 lbf (1,468 N)
- Green: 310 lbf (1,379 N)
- As printed: “Janka side hardness 310 lb for green material and 330 lb for dry.”
- Air-dry density
- 23 lb/ft³ (368 kg/m³)
- Basic specific gravity
- 0.30 oven-dry weight, green volume
- As printed: “Basic specific gravity (ovendry weight/green volume) 0.30; air-dry density 23 pcf.”
- Shrinkage, green to oven-dry
- 8.0% tangential
- Radial 3.3%
One source: USDA Forest Products Laboratory, Tropical Timbers of the World (Chudnoff, 1979 edition), the only published source read for this wood
Strength
Bending strength is the modulus of rupture (MOR); stiffness is the modulus of elasticity (MOE); crushing strength is compression parallel to the grain. The sheet collects these from published tests: it prints 2 data sets, from different tests and sources, so they can differ widely; all are shown, in the sheet's order, each at the moisture content printed beside it, never restated as 12%.
| Moisture | Bending strength (MOR) | Stiffness (MOE) | Crushing strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green | 4,650 psi (32 MPa) | 0.86 million psi (5.9 GPa) | 2,000 psi (14 MPa) |
| 12% MC | 6,630 psi (46 MPa) | 1.06 million psi (7.3 GPa) | 3,380 psi (23 MPa) |
A dash means the sheet prints no value; none is filled in.
What the data sheet says
- Color, grain and texture
- Wood pinkish-buff, yellowish to light gray; no differentiation between sapwood and heartwood. Texture coarse; grain straight; without distinctive odor or taste.
- Working properties
- Reported to be easy to work and finishes smoothly.
- Durability
- Very perishable and vulnerable to termite attack.
- Uses
- Turnery, boxes and crates, clogs-wooden shoes, fishnet floats. The tree is primarily favored for its flowers which yield an aromatic oil.
- Where it grows
- Lower Burma, Malayan Peninsula, Philippines, Borneo, West Irian, and Australia. Widely cultivated for its flowers.
Quoted from Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 579–580, a USDA Forest Products Laboratory work in the public domain.
Work it out for your project
- Rank woods for turning with the species picker
Weigh cananga against other woods on hardness, weight, movement and color, every figure from the Wood Handbook.