a) General description: White to creamy-white in colour with a natural luster. Straight grained, but often curly or wavy producing the attractive fiddle back figure on quartered surfaces. Sometimes quartered stock has a beautiful lacey figure due to conspicuous rays.
b) Mechanical properties: This excellent wood of medium density has medium bending and crushing strengths, low resistance to shock loads and very low stiffness, and a very good steam bending classification.
c) Seasoning: It air dries well but is inclined to stain. Very rapid surface drying prevents this, and end-stacking of boards is the usual practice to allow this. For kiln drying a low temperature is the best treatment.
d) Working properties: Works easily with hand or machine tools, and provides a fine, smooth finishs.
e) Durability : Perishable. Sapwood is liable to insect attack but it is permeable to preservative treatment .
f) Uses : Turnery, bobbins, textile rollers, brush handles, furniture, flooring for domestic use, domestic and dairy utensils, laundry and butcher appliances, food containers, musical instruments, cooperage. Fiddle-back is supplied for the backs of violins. When chemically treated into shades of silver grey it is sold commercially as hare wood, and it is often steamed or treated to changes colour into a pink or mid-brown and sold as weathered sycamore .
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