Tropical wood · Southeast Asia and Oceania
White Bombay wood
White Bombay (Terminalia procera, family Combretaceae) is a tropical timber from Southeast Asia and Oceania. Dry, its Janka hardness is 1,070 lbf (4,760 N), and air-dry it weighs about 40 lb/ft³ (641 kg/m³). The figures are from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 751–752.
Other names, by country: Badam (India).
Key numbers
- Janka hardness, dry
- 1,070 lbf (4,760 N)
- Green: 955 lbf (4,248 N)
- As printed: “Janka side hardness 955 lb green and 1,070 lb for dry material.”
- Air-dry density
- 40 lb/ft³ (641 kg/m³)
- Basic specific gravity
- 0.52 oven-dry weight, green volume
- As printed: “Basic specific gravity (ovendry weight/green volume) 0.52; air-dry density 40 pcf.”
- Shrinkage, green to oven-dry
- 6.1% tangential
- Radial 3.5%, volumetric 11.1%
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 | 8,400 psi (58 MPa) | 1.28 million psi (8.8 GPa) | 4,125 psi (28 MPa) |
| 8% MC | 12,455 psi (86 MPa) | 1.55 million psi (10.7 GPa) | 7,230 psi (50 MPa) |
A dash means the sheet prints no value; none is filled in.
What the data sheet says
- Color, grain and texture
- Heartwood light brown to dark grayish-brown; sapwood grayish, often blotched with yellow that yields a water-soluble dye. Grain generally straight; texture coarse; somewhat lustrous; without characteristic odor or taste.
- Working properties
- The wood is easy to work with hand and machine tools, dresses to a smooth finish and takes a fair polish.
- Durability
- Heartwood is nondurable and not resistant to termite attack; sapwood is liable to powder-post beetle attack.
- Uses
- Furniture, joinery, general carpentry, core stock for plywood.
- Where it grows
- Andaman Islands.
Quoted from Tropical Timbers of the World, pp. 751–752, 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 white Bombay against other woods on hardness, weight, movement and color, every figure from the Wood Handbook.