Avodire wood doesn’t last long because it doesn’t resist rot or decay and is easy for insects to get into.
Avodire wood has been used in furniture for a long time because it has a naturally shiny surface that gives it a unique look.
After it’s been planed, it has a nice satin sheen, which is why it’s called African Satinwood. “African Satinwood” is a common, though inaccurate, nickname.
Most of the time, the grain is wavy, but it can also be crooked and uniform. Avodiré is soft, has fine grains, and has a medium structure.
Avodiré is a fairly hard wood but is easy to work with. This means that you don’t need any special tools to process it. You can use regular tools. It is also very light and has a smooth surface, even though it is very hard.
Avodire, also called Turraeanthus Africanus, is a tree that can grow up to 110 feet tall and has a trunk that is usually between 2 and 3 feet in diameter but can sometimes be as big as 5 feet.
The sapwood and heartwood of Avodiré are the same color, which ranges from pale yellow to creamy yellow to brownish yellow to a golden brown.
West Africa is where avodiré, a tropical wood, comes from. It is one of the rare wood types.
Most of the time, avodire is used as veneer wood, but it is also often used for parquet, furniture, musical instruments, moldings, paneling, building materials, and sawn wood. And just as parquet it is very beautiful.
Avodire is sold under other names
OTHER COMMON NAMES: Blimah-pu, Apapaye, Lusamba, Apeya, Enagen, Agbe, M’Fube, Esu, Wansenwa, African Satinwood.
Avodire has been sold as white mahogany, African mahogany, African satinwood, and African furniture wood.
Aesthetics
Avodire has a unique, shimmering look, and its shine is what usually sells it.
It is known for its “barber pole” shape and has different grain patterns, such as wavy, mottled, or rippled.
Its veneer is beautiful, elegant, and often used in paneling or smaller furniture projects. It is also used to make musical instruments.
Availability
Avodire is most regularly and inexpensively offered for sale as a veneer, although it is also available in board form. Avodire once enjoyed widespread usage but has fallen into disuse in recent decades.
Pricing
The pricing of avodire lumber will probably fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum for imported hardwoods. It is comparable to other middle-range African timbers like padauk in this regard.
There is a good chance that veneer or solid lumber with a highly figured grain will be significantly more expensive.
The price of plain avodire lumber is comparable to that of other African lumbers like mahoganies and is considered modest. On the other hand, the cost of figured to highly figured grain avodire is significantly higher.
Veneer made of avodire is very frequently offered for sale at a competitive price.
Geography
In tropical West Africa, distributed from the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, and Gold Coast via Congo to Angola in a relatively narrow strip of about 40 km along the coast.
Maintenance
Avodire wood needs to be carefully dried, so it doesn’t warp, twist, or cup. Avodire, on the other hand, dries quickly.
Avodire is sensitive to light, so if you want to keep its natural color, you need to treat it with UV light or cover it.
Sustainability
The CITES Appendices do not list this type of wood, but the IUCN Red List does.
Since its population has decreased by more than 15% over the past three generations, it is classified as vulnerable.
This occurs due to hunting and the reduction in its native range.
Is Avodire hard or softwood
Wood type: Hardwood.
Avodire is a hardwood that grows in western and central Africa. It is a fairly light hard wood with a good weight ratio to hardness.
Avodire wood stain
Avodire Staining: Fair – May change color or stain unevenly. Material cut into quarters tends to stain unevenly, but it can usually be made to look very good.
Avodire is made in the same way as African mahogany.
Even though the two trees don’t seem the same from the outside, it’s difficult to tell them differently when stained and finished.
Wood identification
In avodire wood, there is little to no difference between sapwood and heartwood.
Most of the time, the wood is creamy white to pale yellow, but as it ages, it turns golden yellow. It has a nice shine and a fine, even texture.
Avodire has a grain that is either wavy or irregularly interlocked, which can result in striped, mottled, or curly patterns that are very attractive.
Avodire is a large, evergreen tree with rich, dark green, spreading crown that can grow up to 35 meters tall and sometimes even up to 45 meters. The bole can be straight for 10 to 15 meters, or even 30 meters in rare cases, and it can be up to 120 cm in diameter.
In some places, like Ghana, the tree has large buttresses, but in Sierra Leone, it is only swollen and not buttressed, and in DR Congo, it is only lightly fluted. The bole is often crooked and bad-looking, and it has low branches.
Small amounts of this beautiful and valuable wood are traded around the world. On farms, tree is sometimes planted.
Color and appearance
The color of the wood ranges from pale yellow to creamy yellow to brownish yellow to golden brown as it gets darker. The sapwood doesn’t look different.
The grain is straight, wavy, or irregularly interlocked, which gives the wood a beautiful mottled look when cut into quarters. It shines well on its own.
Endgrain
Wood diffuse porous. Occasionally vessels are exclusively solitary (over 90%). Tangential diameter of vessel lumina 100 to 150 microns (small). Non-vestured pits.
Vessels per mm2 10 to 20 (abundant). Simple perforation plates. Vessel-ray pits are similar to inter-vessel Paratracheal axial parenchyma scanty or vasicentric.
Flower
The white to creamy-yellow flowers are in clusters in the leaves’ axils and form conspicuous panicles with numerous flowers. The flowers differ very little from those of mahogany.
They may be found nearly all the year round, although the main flowering period is in the spring, with a second, less abundant, blossoming in the autumn.
Fruit
The fruit takes about 6 months to develop and generally matures in the autumn. It is in the form of a fig-shaped, fleshy capsule.
These capsules are over an inch in diameter, yellow or orange, scented, and have a soft, whitish pulp in which the seeds, usually 4 or 5 inches, are embedded.
The seeds germinate readily, and the young seedlings are plentiful, although few survive in the dense shade of the old-growth forests. They quickly fill up any opening in the stand and are easily transplanted.
Grain and texture
The grain may be straight, wavy, uneven, or interlaced in its arrangement. The texture is relatively smooth, and it possesses a high natural brilliance.
Tree
Avodire is a medium-sized tree in comparison to the giants of West Africa. It may reach 60 to 100 feet in height but only attains 90 feet or more under favorable conditions.
It often has a diameter at the base of 3 to h feet, even up to 5 feet. Generally, the tree is of a poor habit of growth.
The trees do not develop very clear or straight trunks, which are in considerable waste in logging.
Avodire wood bark
Grey-white, rough with shallow fissures later scaling in small patches; inner bark yellow.
The bark is ash-colored, tinged with red, and stands out in contrast with the foliage’s very dark, glossy green.
The bark is said to have toxic properties. It peels off in thin strips, the inner portion being creamy yellow and possessing a very characteristic aromatic odor.
The bark of Avodiè is gray and peels off in thin threads. The inner bark is yellowish with a very characteristic smell.
Avodire wood pros and cons
Avodire is a special kind of wood that has a lot of uses. It looks soft and pretty, which makes it great for decorating inside.
This blog will go over the benefits and drawbacks of Avodire wood to help you decide if it’s perfect for your project.
Rot resistance
Avodire does not have a high level of durability in terms of its resistance to decay and is sensitive to being eaten by insects.
Strength and Durability
Avodire wood is not very strong, has a medium density, and doesn’t bend well with steam.
Avodire is not very stiff and doesn’t stand up well to shock loads. Both machine tools and hand tools work well with Avodire. Heartwood doesn’t last long and is said to be weak or not resistant to termites.
The heartwood is resistant to treatments that keep the wood from rotting, while the sapwood is porous. The Janka scale has a value of 1080 pounds of force.
Allergies and toxicity
Even though serious reactions are rare, Avodire has been known to cause skin irritation, nosebleeds, internal bleeding, and symptoms similar to asthma.
The bark is used to kill fish, and sometimes the leaves are also used in the same way. Sawdust is very irritating and can cause woodworkers to bleed internally, so they need good ventilation.
Workability
Avodire with the interlocked grain can tear out when machined or planed, but an artisan can reduce the cutting angle of the machines to help avoid this.
Tool cutters are also a little bit dulled by the wood. Avodire is a good glue and a good finish. It makes cutting edges less sharp but glues, sands, and finishes well.
Most people think that avodire works well and that it is easy to work with hand and machine tools.
Avodire wood uses
The wood from the avodire tree is used to make high-quality furniture, cabinets, musical instruments, decorative woodwork like molding and paneling, and sliced veneer.
Regarding how it works as a wood, avodire is sometimes like mahogany, which is distantly related. It works well and is easy to work with machines and hand tools.
Straight-grained wood is used to make plywood and high-end furniture.
Avodire wood for furniture
Creamy-white to pale yellow, Avodire will age to a golden yellow. Heartwood and sapwood are barely distinguishable. Grain can be uniform or wavy and interlocked, presenting some tear-out challenges in a species that is otherwise easy to work.
There is a natural lustrousness to Avodire, so it’s frequently used as a veneer, in addition to furniture applications.
Avodire is not an insect- or rot-resistant, so exterior applications are not recommended.
Avodire veneer
Avodire has a variety of grain patterns, such as wavy, mottled, and rippled. It also has a chatoyance that looks like it’s almost simmering, making it a popular choice for veneering.
The wood is stable and very strong for how much it weighs. Avodire is useful in the same way that real mahoganies are and is related to them because it is in the same family.
Most figured wood is turned into veneer for decorative work, the type of wood most often brought into the U.S.
Avodire Parquet
Avodiré is a beautiful wood that works well as parquet because of its beauty.
This kind of wood has a warm color that ranges from brownish yellow to golden yellow. This wood also has a strange grain and can have knotholes.
So, the parquet looks not only warm, friendly, and bright but also very lively. Most of the time, you won’t be bored in Avodiré. This makes rooms look cheerful and bright.
Avodiré parquet floors are also easy to keep clean and take care of.
