There are at least 3 dozen species, split pretty much evenly between the two genera Casuarina and Allocasuarina that have the word sheoak as all or part of one or more of their common names and I have no idea which of them are represented on this page. It appears that they are all native to Australia.
Sheoak is a tree species and "lace" is a figure pattern that occurs in about 1 out of 100 sheoak trees. The "1 out of 100" seems more anecdotal than hard statistics, but certainly the lace figure is fairly rare. and while "normal" sheoak is an attractive wood, lace sheoak is a real standout and is what most people associate with the name sheoak.
Sheoak is NOT, by the way, related to oak at all, that's just an accident of the name.
I have it anecdotally that the reason for the name sheoak is that this wood is one of the ones that early settlers decided to call "oak" but it is not nearly as strong as regular oak and thus was named "she" oak, meaning "weak" oak.
my samples:
NOT A RAW WOOD COLOR 3 views of a sheoak turning with each view showing 2 pics taken 9 years apart. Details and enlargements of each view are shown at the bottom of this page; this is here just to show how the color darkens with age. The upper (earlier) set is just slightly too light in color and not quite as red as it should be. The piece is finished with several coats of polyurethane. The original wood was lighter (and of course not shiny) than the upper pics.
small piece and end grain
end grain closeup of the piece directly above --- this clearly shows the relatively massive rays (perpendicular to the grain) that allow sheoak to have such an interesting surface pattern when rift cut or quartersawn.
small piece and end grain --- this piece has been oiled, which as you can see deepens the color, especially on the end grain.
No color correction was used --- the color is quite accurate, but compare the relatively uninteresting figure here to that shown at the bottom of this page in the turning sample which is from the same piece of wood as the first sample shown here.
web pics
planks not labled "lace"
although labled sheoak, this looks to me much more like hairy oak
both sides and a closeup of a plank labled "lace" and with a color that is just silly
plank listed as lace --- this one is a PERFECT example of the way that the figure can sometimes resemble a tangle of coarse fibers
planks, all labled as "lace"
lacy sheoak plank; both sides and closeup
two lacy sheoak planks --- both sides of each and a closeup of one of them
lace sheoak slab
"light" sheoak
"dark" sheoak
pics provided by Todd Levy of what he classifies as "lacy" sheoak, although it does not seem to have the lacy figure shown in most of the other pics here of lacy sheoak.
sets of pen blanks that have all been oiled and waxed --- the enlargement of the first of these really shows nicely some particularly attractive characteristic grain pattern of the lace figure
bowls made from lace sheoak
6" lace sheoak bowl by Steve Earis
lace sheoak knife handles
A single turning sample showing various facets of sheoak grain. No color correction was used and the color is just slightly more red than the wood. The polyurethane finish (several coats) really serves to bring out the color and the grain contrast in this very interesting wood. As in many woods with prominent rays, if you give it a high gloss finish then the grain contrast shifts dramatically as you move the wood --- the parts that are light become dark and the parts that are dark become light. I just took this turning out again after 9 years and as you can see below, it has darkened considerably even though it was not exposed to much light (it spent most of those years in a box.
same turning as above but darked after 9 years (mostly inside a closed box but it was exposed to a small amount of indirect sunlight for a while)
NOT A RAW WOOD COLOR
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