Tropical wood · Tropical America
Ocotea rubra wood
Ocotea rubra (Ocotea rubra, family Lauraceae) is a tropical timber from tropical America. Dry, its Janka hardness is 660 lbf (2,936 N), and air-dry it weighs about 40–45 lb/ft³ (641–721 kg/m³). The figures are from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 215–216.
Other names, by country: Determa (Guyana), Wana, Wane (Surinam), Grignon rouge (French Guiana), Louro vermelho (Brazil).
Key numbers
- Janka hardness, dry
- 660 lbf (2,936 N)
- Green: 520 lbf (2,313 N)
- As printed: “Janka side hardness 520 lb for green material and 660 lb at 12% moisture content.”
- Air-dry density
- 40–45 lb/ft³ (641–721 kg/m³)
- Basic specific gravity
- 0.52–0.59 oven-dry weight, green volume
- As printed: “Basic specific gravity (ovendry weight/green volume) 0.52 to 0.59; air-dry density 40 to 45 pcf.”
- Shrinkage, green to oven-dry
- 7.6% tangential
- Radial 3.7%, volumetric 10.4%
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 4 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 | 7,820 psi (54 MPa) | 1.46 million psi (10.1 GPa) | 3,760 psi (26 MPa) |
| 12% MC | 10,470 psi (72 MPa) | 1.82 million psi (12.5 GPa) | 5,800 psi (40 MPa) |
| Green | 10,300 psi (71 MPa) | 1.45 million psi (10 GPa) | 5,150 psi (36 MPa) |
| 15% MC | 13,600 psi (94 MPa) | — | 7,150 psi (49 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 with a golden sheen; well defined sapwood, narrow, dull gray or pale yellowish-brown. Texture rather coarse; grain is interlocked to straight; quartersawed lumber is sometimes attractively figured; dry wood is without distinctive odor or taste.
- Working properties
- Works readily with hand and machine tools with little dulling effect; reported to glue readily and polishes fairly well.
- Durability
- Heartwood is rated durable to very durable in resistance to attack by white-rot arid durable to a brown rot; moderately resistant to dry-wood termites; and is similar to teak in resistance to marine borers. Weathering characteristics are excellent and the wood is highly resistant to moisture absorption.
- Uses
- Furniture, general construction, boat planking, tanks and cooperage, joinery, heavy marine construction, turnery, parquet flooring, veneer and plywood is also suggested.
- Where it grows
- The Guianas, Trinidad, and the lower Amazon region of Brazil. Occasional to frequent on sandy or loamy soils in Guyana.
Quoted from Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 215–216, 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 ocotea rubra against other woods on hardness, weight, movement and color, every figure from the Wood Handbook.