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Costa Rican wood

Started by jueston, December 08, 2013, 08:48:08 PM

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jueston

my girlfriend and i just returned from a vacation in Costa Rica. it was an amazing place and my first visit to a rain forest, but i what amazed me about Costa Rica was how common massive pieces of (what we call) exotic wood everywhere...

these first few pictures of from our condo/hotel room
a chest:

and a door:

they aren't anything to amazing, but this is the first place i realized there are no glue joints in the panels of the door or the top of that chest. then as we went out to restaurants we started to see the real big pieces:

those 2 slabs are 6 inches thick almost and a little less than 3 feet wide... slabs like that were in almost every resteraunt we went too, slowly i started to realized that it was actually more common for the tables we sat at to be a solid piece of wood than to be a glue up. some of the tables 4 or 5 feet wide were made from a single piece 2 inches thick, and as far as i could tell that was just a normal method of building a table.

the few table tops that i saw which were glue ups were mostly cracking at the joints, which might be a result of there very high humidity, insanely wet rainy season, or the fact that most restaurants didn't even have windows, just wide open spaces with tables and a roof.

eventually we took our rental Yari:

for the worst ride of my life, 2 hours on washed out one lane rock roads going over 2 mountains before entering the monte verde preserve where we spend several hours walking around the rain forest, i took a hundred pictures of the massive trees, however without a person in the picture everything i so big its hard to even grasp the size of everything, and mostly the trees don't look very amazing in my photos. but here are a few:






i wanted to bring home a 4 foot by 8 foot slab of wood, but i was having a hardtime figuring out how to get it home, or what i would do with a piece of wood that big once i get it back here, as it would make my house seem to small. in the end i got just one souvinier a bowl made from a cookie of a purple heart tree that had some spalting on it:



i don't know what i'm going to do with that yet, since its about 2 feet by 2.5 feet and its really heavy, i might have a iron bracket made to hold it, and then mount it on the wall, its hard to see the details in the pictures but the spalting and the growth rings in the purple heart are amazing, i have spent hours just looking at the tiniest little details in the wood. it was worth every penny and all the hassle getting it back through customs... i'm pretty sure i won't find another bowl like that anytime soon, i took it to work to show off and the office next to ours which shares our kitchen is a high end design studio, and several of the designers made pretty high cash offers right there on the spot, but it came home with me anyways...

thecfarm

And the worst part is all those big trees and big pieces of slabs are no big deal to most of them. We take things for granted at times.
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

jueston

exactly, i stopped at a few woodshops while i was down there to try and talk to the woodworkers (i don't speak spanish, they didn't speak english) but at one shop i saw they took delivery of a pallet of wood in huge slabs and they were cutting it down into smaller pieces to make something.... to them, those huge slabs are normal everyday pieces....

drobertson

Pretty stuff!   thanks for sharing your trip,    love to go sometime,   david
only have a few chain saws I'm not suppose to use, but will at times, one dog Dolly, pretty good dog, just not sure what for yet,  working on getting the gardening back in order, and kinda thinking on maybe a small bbq bizz,  thinking about it,

Fla._Deadheader


Jueston, could you explain how you went about shipping, getting through customs, and the cost of shipping?

I get questions on my website about larger pieces, but, never could get details enough to give a decent quote.

I usually just carry small stuff in checked baggage and mail them from Florida.

Thanks  Harold in CR
All truth passes through three stages:
   First, it is ridiculed;
   Second, it is violently opposed; and
   Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

jueston

with incredible foresight and good luck, the checked bag i took there was actually small enough to be a carry on, so i took the bowl as my checked luggage on the way home.

i asked the store clerk what kind of packing they could offer me if i purchased it, and he said they had bubble wrap. so i had them wrap it very thick with bubble wrap there at the store. i then went to the UPS store which was nearby and purchased a box.

as an interesting side note, all the boxes they had were the same price, $3, weather it was tiny or huge.

they did not have a box which was even close to the right size so i just got there biggest box, cut it open to make one long piece of cardboard and wrapped the bowl over the buble wrap, the cardboard went around the bowl twice and was very rigid and i felt it was fairly safe, i then covered it in half a roll of tape so it was nice at tight(this proved pointless since it was opened so many times). i also wrote fragile in huge letters on both sides of the package.

in Costa Rica they inspected it, and they were clearly looking for something very specific, but i was no able to translate it. i belief after thinking about it on the plane, they wanted to make sure there was no bark still attached to the bowl. but they might have simply been curious, i have no idea, either way, they opened it half way up, looked at the edges of the bowl pretty closely then taped it back up.

on the Costa Rican side they treated the fragile package very well and hand delivered to the plane(i watched like a mother seeing her baby carried away) on the american side they had no mercy and threw it around like all other baggage so i'm glad i cared for it well.

when i went though customs in america, they opened it up completely and inspected it, they did several swabs, which i assume were to check for drugs, but i didn't ask any questions. they also X-rayed it.

after i got back i started looking online for the rules about importing wood from central america. and according to the information i found online, as long as the wood is not CITES listed, it is a relatively straight forward process. you have to sign up for some kind of importation licence, then you fill out the paperwork with all the species and quantities, then once you received it back and pay the bill, the paperwork goes with the shipment through the shipping process(by sea or by air) and as long as it was below some moisture content(i don't remember what %)and doesn't have bark or wood chips or sawdust it does not need to go into quarantine.

i looked that up because i saw finished pieces of workwooding for prices which in america wouldn't even have paid for wood blank for it, and i think if you spent some time in costa rica and in america, and you were patient, and had enough money to float the expenses while you figured out the system, there is some money to be made importing specialty items like bowl blanks and slabs.

there are of course, logistical contractors who can handle all the foot work for you, but i think that would eat up your profit margin pretty quick.

i did look into shipping it briefly but the bowl is HEAVY, and it would have been expensive, and i did not want to let it out of my sight....




Fla._Deadheader


jueston, thanks for that info.  I have round table slabs from 48" down to 12". I have lots of rectangular table slabs, from 36" wide X 8' long X 2½" thick, with fancy grain, down to 12" wide X 36" long X 1½-2" thick, I am trying to figure out a way to sell and ship.

Most of this stuff I got from sawing logs for myself or customers, when I was doing Custom sawing, here in CR.

This gives me some idea of who, what, and how to contact. Thank You,  Harold
All truth passes through three stages:
   First, it is ridiculed;
   Second, it is violently opposed; and
   Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

jueston

what kind of wood have you sawed down there?

i was in the Guanacaste area, and Guanacaste was everywhere and used for everything, it seems like a very useful wood, hard and stable, its interesting that it is basically unknown in north america. but i saw a lot of rosewoods, purpleheart, and ironwood in the giftshops.


Fla._Deadheader


Wehave 3 Guanacaste that we planted. Around our area, Guanacaste does not make good lumber, according to the locals. We get a lot more rain where we live, and Guanacaste is in a much flatter drier micro climate. The tree needs to do a complete wet dry wet cycling to make the kind of wood you have seen. Purple heart does not grow up here.

We have Laurel, a mild hardwood, that is bug resistant, rot resistant and easy to drive nails into, although it will split on occasion. It has no similarity to bush type Sheep Laurel or Mountain Laurel in the states.

We have Cenizaro we planted. It is similar to Guanacaste, but, has yellow running all through it, to offset the solid brown color of Guanacaste.

We used to have a LOT of Pilo'n, but, it was logged out of existance in this area. I have been given one that was cut and the whole tree leaped off the hill side. It is 40'+ down the hill, only accessible with a winch, but, IT is over 48" dia.  2 miles directly south of us, Laurel does not grow, but, that's where that big Piol'n tree is.

I had a cheap customer that wanted 5 Cubano (Cuban mahogany) logs, 60' long with no limbs, over 5' dia sawn, but, he didn't want to pay my price. I asked how long they were on the ground. He said 5 years. Seems he didn't want anyones prices, so now, they are junk, rotting in the river bottom of his farm. He would not even listen to my offer to buy 1 log before sending me down the road.

Around us, Teak and Melina were planted as Plantations. Now, it's not worth a lot because it was not pruned properly, in many cases.

Most of our area was easier to access, 40-80 years ago, and was logged out. Now, just an occasional Ojoche Hardwood or Guyanasa and Seibo used for concrete forming, are found.

The stuff in the Airport, mostly is Nicaraguan Rosewood. I know 2 people that buy it finish it and sell it in the Airport.
All truth passes through three stages:
   First, it is ridiculed;
   Second, it is violently opposed; and
   Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

jueston

arturo solano sells a lot of stuff at the airport, do you know him? he is the one who made the purple heart bowl.

here is a picture of him with my bowl that i found on facebook after i returned home with it.


his main focus is on making things out roots.

i had heard that there were large teak plantations, but i did not see any in my travels. the entire area where i was staying was deforested previously and all of the trees were relatively young, the warm wet climate makes some trees grow very fast, but there were almost no monster trees in our area.

Monte Verde was logged only 50 years ago i believe and that's where all my rain forest pictures came from. Some of those trees are 4+ feet across. by comparison the growth rates for hardwoods here in MN that's mind-blowing.

Fla._Deadheader


The 2 people I spoke about knowing, I really know OF, through my wife's daughter, that is a Jewelry crafter. She knows personally a LOT of people that sell all over CR, including at both Airports, I believe. The rosewood (Cocobolo) is not supposed to be cut, unless MINAE, the Eco division of the Govt, approves it. Doesn't matter to a LOT of people.They cut whatever they want. That's why most Rosewood is from Nicaraqua.

You are correct about fast growth. Problem is, the better quality higher $$ stuff, still takes over 50 years to maturity. If the seeds are not planted back, one has to rely on volunteer growth, which can be very iffy, being as how most cut over land is immediately turned into cow, horse and goat pasture. Natural seeding gets eaten upon emergence down here.
All truth passes through three stages:
   First, it is ridiculed;
   Second, it is violently opposed; and
   Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

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