Tropical wood · Tropical America
Simarouba wood
Simarouba (Simarouba amara, family Simaroubaceae) is a tropical timber from tropical America. Dry, its Janka hardness is 440 lbf (1,957 N), and air-dry it weighs about 27 lb/ft³ (432 kg/m³). The figures are from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 279–280.
Other names, by country: Aceituno (Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama), Cedro blanco, Simaruba (Venezuela), Soemaroeba (Surinam), Caixeta, Marupá, Marubá (Brazil), Acajou blanc (Fr. Guiana).
Key numbers
- Janka hardness, dry
- 440 lbf (1,957 N)
- Green: 390 lbf (1,735 N)
- As printed: “Janka side hardness 390 lb for green material and 440 lb at 12% moisture content.”
- Air-dry density
- 27 lb/ft³ (432 kg/m³)
- Basic specific gravity
- 0.38 oven-dry weight, green volume
- As printed: “Basic specific gravity (ovendry weight/green volume) 0.38; air-dry density 27 pcf.”
- Shrinkage, green to oven-dry
- 5.0% tangential
- Radial 2.3%, volumetric 8.0%
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 3 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 | 6,310 psi (44 MPa) | 1.14 million psi (7.9 GPa) | 2,970 psi (20 MPa) |
| 12% MC | 8,930 psi (62 MPa) | 1.24 million psi (8.5 GPa) | 4,840 psi (33 MPa) |
| 12% MC | 8,350 psi (58 MPa) | 1.29 million psi (8.9 GPa) | 4,900 psi (34 MPa) |
A dash means the sheet prints no value; none is filled in.
What the data sheet says
- Color, grain and texture
- Heartwood not differentiated from the whitish or straw-colored sapwood, with occasional oily streaks. Luster rather high; texture medium and uniform; grain usually straight; without odor but with a bitter quinine-like taste.
- Working properties
- The wood works easily and machines to a smooth clean surface.. Freshly felled logs tend to split in sawing due to internal stresses. The wood is easy to finish and to glue.
- Durability
- Pure culture tests indicate the wood to be somewhat durable to a white-rot and brown-rot fungus; however, actual graveyard evaluations show the wood to be readily attacked by decay fungi and insects. The wood is also very susceptible to dry-wood termite attack and prone to blue stain.
- Uses
- Interior construction, boxes and crates, furniture components, veneer and plywood, patternmaking, millwork, particleand fiberboard.
- Where it grows
- Northern South America from Venezuela and the Guianas to the Amazon region of Brazil, also in Trinidad and Tobago.
Quoted from Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 279–280, 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 simarouba against other woods on hardness, weight, movement and color, every figure from the Wood Handbook.