Tropical wood · Tropical America
Ocote Pine wood
Ocote Pine (Pinus oocarpa, family Pinaceae) is a tropical timber from tropical America. Dry, its Janka hardness is 910 lbf (4,048 N), and air-dry it weighs about 41 lb/ft³ (657 kg/m³). The figures are from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 235–236.
Other names, by country: Pino (generally in Latin America), Ocote (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua).
Key numbers
- Janka hardness, dry
- 910 lbf (4,048 N)
- Green: 580 lbf (2,580 N)
- As printed: “Janka side hardness 580 lb for green material and 910 lb at 12% moisture content.”
- Air-dry density
- 41 lb/ft³ (657 kg/m³)
- Basic specific gravity
- 0.55 oven-dry weight, green volume
- As printed: “Basic specific gravity (ovendry weight/green volume) 0.55; air-dry density 41 pcf.”
- Shrinkage, green to oven-dry
- 7.5% tangential
- Radial 4.6%, volumetric 12.3%
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 | 7,970 psi (55 MPa) | 1.74 million psi (12 GPa) | 3,690 psi (25 MPa) |
| 12% MC | 14,870 psi (103 MPa) | 2.25 million psi (15.5 GPa) | 7,680 psi (53 MPa) |
A dash means the sheet prints no value; none is filled in.
What the data sheet says
- Color, grain and texture
- Heartwood light reddish-brown; distinct from the pale yellowish-brown sapwood. Luster medium; grain straight; texture is somewhat fine and uniform; odor resinous, taste not distinctive; growth rings distinct.
- Working properties
- The wood is easy to work with hand and machine tools and is comparable with the southern yellow pines.
- Durability
- The heartwood is classified as very durable in resistance to attack by a white-rot fungus and moderately durable when exposed to a brown rot. The wood does not weather well without the protection of paint or other coatings.
- Uses
- General purpose construction timber (light and heavy), flooring, box and crate lumber, poles and crossties (treated), and other uses similar to that of the southern yellow pines.
- Where it grows
- Upper mountain slopes and mountain ridge tops from northwestern Mexico southward to central Nicaragua; most extensively in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
Quoted from Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 235–236, a USDA Forest Products Laboratory work in the public domain.
Work it out for your project
- Rank woods for flooring with the species picker
Weigh ocote Pine against other woods on hardness, weight, movement and color, every figure from the Wood Handbook.