April 2nd, 2024: Here’s a diary of a day spent hunting for samples of Tasmanian Blackwood in Italy. Nice wood, perfect weather, an inspiring place!

A special thanks goes to Carabinieri Forestali di Genova e Sestri Levante and Associazione Nazionale Forestali – sezione Liguria for hosting the expedition and providing loads of information on the subject.

Acacia Melanoxylon was planted here in the 80’s as fire-stopper, and some trees grew to a good size (10-15m):

These are leaves and flowers:

Samples were collected from 5 different trees, two of which were large dead standing trees, like this one:

Three were small trees that had been recently cut to clear the nearby path.
The “hunting party”:

Some of the collected logs, which were then cut to length and then sliced prior to sample cutting:

The samples, tagged before analyzing:

Some of the samples provided very high chatoyance results, like this one:

Many more info about results gathered from these samples can be found in Tasmanian Blackwood – Heartwood and Sapwood and Sunlight Exposure on Tasmanian Blackwood, while statistic results from Tasmanian Blackwood can be found in Australian Blackwood.

Want to know more? Get Woodworker’s Guide to Chatoyance!

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… and enjoy the read!