Friday, April 27, 2007

Jacarandá do Pará II

In my last posting I showed a sample of jacarandá do Pará wood with some leaves in the background. These were of the tree itself. In this entry I want to show the trunk of the tree to demonstrate that it's not the normal format of most trees being cut for lumber. Mind you, this is a very young tree but as it gets older, it'll keep the figure of a relatively short trunk with branches going off in all directions. If you visit the Santarém sawmill which exports this lumber, you'll see that the logs are of short lengths, most in the neighborhood of 3 meters. Likewise, if you inspect the pallets of jacarandá do Pará ready for shipment at the deep water pier, you see that they are miniature in seize compared to the other lumber shipments, most of which are in 5-6 meters lengths. Another thing you'll notice different about the pallets is that they contain logs, not planks. Just one note in that regard. The Brazilian law doesn't allow uncut logs to be exported, therefore the logs have been sawed vertically into three or four pieces without removing the bark. This exotic wood is worth a fortune, so every ounce counts for those doing the final cuts.

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