Tropical wood · Tropical America
Espave wood
Espave (Anacardium excelsum, family Anacardiaceae) is a tropical timber from tropical America. Dry, its Janka hardness is 470 lbf (2,091 N), and air-dry it weighs about 30 lb/ft³ (481 kg/m³). The figures are from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 19–20.
Other names, by country: Espavel (Nicaragua), Caracoli (Venezuela, Colombia), Cajú assú, Cajú da matta (Brazil), Marañón (Ecuador).
Key numbers
- Janka hardness, dry
- 470 lbf (2,091 N)
- Green: 400 lbf (1,779 N)
- As printed: “Janka side hardness 400 lb green and 470 lb for air-dry wood.”
- Air-dry density
- 30 lb/ft³ (481 kg/m³)
- Basic specific gravity
- 0.41 oven-dry weight, green volume
- As printed: “Basic specific gravity (ovendry weight/green volume) 0.41; air-dry density 30 pcf.”
- Shrinkage, green to oven-dry
- 5.2% tangential
- Radial 2.8%, volumetric 8.4%
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 | 5,320 psi (37 MPa) | 1.06 million psi (7.3 GPa) | 2,460 psi (17 MPa) |
| 12% MC | 7,960 psi (55 MPa) | 1.28 million psi (8.8 GPa) | 4,530 psi (31 MPa) |
A dash means the sheet prints no value; none is filled in.
What the data sheet says
- Color, grain and texture
- Heartwood on exposure becomes fairly uniform russet brown with a golden or reddish cast; sapwood is 6 to 10 in. thick, grayish white with more or less pinkish tinge, sharply demarcated from heartwood. Wood has a fairly high luster and is attractively marked by prominent vessel lines; medium to coarse textured and typically has an interlocked grain with a pronounced stripe. Distinctive odor and taste are lacking.
- Working properties
- Espavé is rated poor in planing and sanding properties, good in shaping and mortising, and fair in turning and boring. Chipped grain and fuzzy surfaces are the most common machining defects. A silica content of only 0.09% is reported.
- Durability
- Laboratory tests indicate the heartwood to be durable upon exposure to both white-rot and brown-rot fungi. Other evaluations have indicated the wood to be vulnerable to attack by fungi and insects. The wood has been classified as resistant to dry-wood termite attack.
- Uses
- General construction both interior and exterior (heartwood) has been suggested. Furniture, veneer and plywood, boxes and crates, and pulp and paper products have also been recommended.
- Where it grows
- Costa Rica south through Panama to Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Frequently found in coastal areas on well-drained soils. Almost pure stands reported in the Darin Province of Panama.
Quoted from Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 19–20, a USDA Forest Products Laboratory work in the public domain.
Work it out for your project
- Rank woods for furniture with the species picker
Weigh espave against other woods on hardness, weight, movement and color, every figure from the Wood Handbook.