[TheForge] I need a piece of tree...

[Andrew Vida]

Eucalyptus as in the species commonly found in CA isn't good for 
anything... not even burning, IMO.  Tough?  Not in my experience, but 
perhaps I've not seen it all.  One interesting characteristic of it is 
that greenwood explodes... i.e., in fires, the trees literally blow up. 
  I recall a fire in SF back when I lived there... a grove of eucalyptus 
was burning and the trees blew apart when the water and oils got to 
boiling.  I remember driving by after the fact and seeing all these 
trees looking like they'd had a toss with dynamite and lost.

Michael Horgan wrote:
> At 11:12 PM 9/18/2008, you wrote:
>> Thanks Grant; Answers my Q .
>> I agree about taper being important. The local oaks have nice hard 
>> wood but it doesn't stand up well as handles. The wood rats just loved 
>> the black locust i planted with handles in mind....sapling was 
>> completely gone in 2 days.
>> Been wondering about some of the eucalyptus species..seems like tough, 
>> stringy stuff, and very available.   pf
> 
> My experience with eucalyptus is that it tends to be brittle, Peter 
> works ok when worked green but cracks easily when drying,  I tried 
> splitting some out for tool handles (lathe turned chisel handles) after 
> drying for a year, here, but the handles still tended to shatter on impact