Tropical wood · Africa
West African Cordia wood
West African Cordia (Cordia millenii, family Boraginaceae) is a tropical timber from Africa. Dry, its Janka hardness is 590 lbf (2,624 N), and air-dry it weighs about 25 lb/ft³ (400 kg/m³). The figures are from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 373–374.
Other names, by country: Omo (Nigeria), Ébé (Cameroon).
Key numbers
- Janka hardness, dry
- 590 lbf (2,624 N)
- Green: 550 lbf (2,447 N)
- As printed: “Janka side hardness 550 lb for green and 590 lb for dry material.”
- Air-dry density
- 25 lb/ft³ (400 kg/m³)
- Basic specific gravity
- 0.34 oven-dry weight, green volume
- As printed: “Basic specific gravity (ovendry weight/green volume) about 0.34; air-dry density 25 pcf.”
- Shrinkage, green to oven-dry
- 4.6% tangential
- Radial 3.4%, volumetric 7.5%
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 | 7,800 psi (54 MPa) | 0.88 million psi (6.1 GPa) | 3,810 psi (26 MPa) |
| 12% MC | 9,700 psi (67 MPa) | 1 million psi (6.9 GPa) | 5,200 psi (36 MPa) |
| 12% MC | 9,150 psi (63 MPa) | — | 4,050 psi (28 MPa) |
A dash means the sheet prints no value; none is filled in.
What the data sheet says
- Color, grain and texture
- Heartwood pale golden-brown to medium brown, occasionally with a pinkish tint; sapwood lighter. Texture coarse; grain typically interlocked to give a stripe figure; lustrous; brittleheart fairly common.
- Working properties
- Works well with hand and machine tools and is easy to finish, in planing there is some tearing of interlocked grain, nails satisfactorily.
- Durability
- Generally heartwood may be raced as moderately durable.
- Uses
- Fine furniture and cabinetwork, joinery, and other decorative work where strength is not important.
- Where it grows
- Widely distributed in tropical Africa, found in closed forests and old secondary formations.
Quoted from Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 373–374, 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 west African Cordia against other woods on hardness, weight, movement and color, every figure from the Wood Handbook.