Black Poisonwood, or, Chechen

Finished with gloss polyurethane

This is a material called Chechen, but it also goes by Black Poisonwood, which is an order of magnitude more badass, so we're gonna go with that.

Brief post on the material after the jump with limited pictures. I plan to get a few better pictures to update the post with (when I do, then I'll delete this note).

Black poisonwood is hard; it's Janka hardness is 2,250 lb/f, which put it on par with zebrawood and purpleheart, far harder than maple, oak, or ash. It's a tropical hardwood fro Central America and the Carribean, so hardness sort of goes with the territory.

It had a rich brown color that, per usual, darkens and richens with finish. It's an oily wood, and the "poisonwood" part of its name comes from the fact that many people have an allergic reaction to the sap of the wood, which is gone by the time it's in workable lumber form.

It's cost is, while not quite prohibitive, I would classify it firmly in the "high" category relative to other materials. I was commissioned to build something out of it and struggled to find a good source of it and had to settle for buying it in 3" x 24" x 3/4" strips, which is definitively not a cost effective format.