SNAKEWOOD

Snakewood comes from a smallish, relatively rare tree found in the forests of Central and South America and is reportedly is somewhat brittle and difficult to work, but worth the effort. It is very rare in general and fully figured pieces are even more rare and very expensive. It is also available in unfigured form, usually at a greatly reduced price. There is generally a problem with pith checking (that is, the center of the logs tend to have long voids and splits after drying). Typically only 25% of a log will have the famous snakeskin figure and this, combined with the frequent pith checks make it a popular wood for vendors to sell in log form by the pound because that way they put the onus on the buyer of finding out the typically bad news about what's inside the log.

 Snakewood is a very hard, dense wood that turns VERY nicely and polishes to a VERY high gloss (glass-like) and does not suffer from the brittleness of the figured sections.

Both figured and unfigured sections are prone to extremely thin cracks that sometimes cannot be seen until after the wood is fully worked and a finish is applied.

Called "Snakewood" because of the fairly obvious snake-skin look of the figured portions. In England it's called "letter wood" because the figure was interpreted as looking somewhat like hieroglyphics.

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