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CHECHEM
Metopium brownei
my samples:
plank and closeup --- poor surfacing but really nice figure; the pics don't quite do it justice. To see what this looks like in a finished product, see the bowl at the bottom of this page.
planks
a set of pen blanks --- shown at the bottom of this page, used in turned bowls.
plank and end grain
end grain closeup of the piece directly above
plank and end grain
end grain closeup of the piece directly above
both sides of a plank and end grain for each --- the difference in figure between the two sides is quite pronounced
end grain closeup of the piece directly above
both sides of a plank and end grain for each
end grain closeup of the piece directly above
a smaller piece cut from the plank directly above --- the freshly exposed surface is slightly more colorful than the longer exposed surface in the larger piece even though the larger piece was sanded before being photographed.
4 samples taken from a batch of thins
sample plank and end grain
end grain closeup of the piece directly above
plank
planks and closeup --- top plank is quartersawn, middle one is flat cut, bottom one is rift cut. The color of the heartwood is quite accurate but the sapwood on the top plank shows up as a little brighter than the actual wood.
plank and closeup
the other side, and a closeup, of the piece directly above --- the pics don't quite do justice to this piece --- it has a real sheen and a lovely grain and I'm betting that it's going to make a terrific side to one of my laminated bowls
planks and closeup
planks and closeup
planks and closeup, showing a nice mottle figure on the darker two planks.
plank (and a side grain pic) cut from the larger mottled plank directly above. The sanding has reduced the richness of the mottle, but I'm confident that a finishing agent will bring it back.
closeups of the side grain and end grain of the piece directly above
4 planks, all with nice figure
plank and closeup
two small planks and end grain. It took me a while to be convinced that these are chechem because I bought them unidentified in a mixed lot and while all of the characteristics save one were highly consistent with chechem, that one, the weight, was a bit outside my experience. General reports have chechem at 53 to 60 lbs/cubic foot and my own experience of 20 or so 1BF-sized planks purchased over a couple of years has all been in the 60 to 70 lbs/cubic foot range. These planks prorate out to about 51 lbs/cubic foot and it was this obviously lightness (relative to my experience of chechem) that made me think at first that they had to be something else but I'm now convinced that they are chechem.
end grain closeup of one of the small planks directly above (really bad sanding job on the left side)
bunches and bunches of thin planks showing some of the grain and color variety available in this species
two sections of a 2" thick quartersawn plank and the vendor's web-pic of one of them. My pic's colors are correct; the vendor's pic has too an unnatural orange tint.
Excellent examples of both flat cut and quartersawn surfaces from a piece cut from one of the larger planks directly above and sanded down for the pics. The colors on both these and the end grain shots below are just slightly too red. The color in the pics of the larger planks above is correct.
end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above
web pics
planks
plank with both wet and dry section
a set of planks and two closeups of them --- the plank on the left is obviously figured
figured planks
veneer
burls
burl and closeup
NOTE: most of these web-pics in this section of this page are from the BogusColorVendor, so the extreme red colors are absolutely not to be believed. They are included here to show the variations in shading and in grain pattern, but not to show true colors
burls
planks
both sides of a plank and a closeup
both sides of a plank and the end grain
plank and closeup
ropey curly plank and closeup
figured plank
plank
bowl made from chechem burl
bowl
drum shell with high gloss Polyester finish --- pic submitted by Greg Blake
an interesting demonstration of how radically different the wood appears depending on how it is cut relative to the grain. In each pic, the wood at the front is chechem, but in the first pic the grain is aligned such that the cutting amounts to a flat cut and in the second pic, it is quartersawn. At first glance, it hardly looks like the same wood. Each bowl has a single coating of low-gloss polyurethane. The wood in both of these bowls was taken from the "pen blanks" which are shown in my own samples at the top of this page; that is, the two pieces are essentially identical, but because of the cut they look quite different.
two views of another piece of chechem in one of my bowls, this time with a polhyurethane finish. This is a really marvelous piece, with brilliant color (for the species) and high chatoyancy. The plank the is piece was taken from is shown at the top of the page.