IIronwood Trees

 

Good afternoon all, how is life treating you, I am still staying home doing nothing much at all watching much except the usual. Well it's Tuesday and that means it is plant day and today's plant is the Ironwood. In fact many types of trees are called ironwood because of how heavy their wood is, in fact some are so dense that they are actually heavier then water and sink.

The heaviest of all is thought to be the Australian Buloke, with the heaviest being the black ironwood and the desert ironwood from Central America and the southern United States.

Ironwoods are brilliant at resisting dents and knocks making them perfect for wooden floors and the handles of tools. They can however still be cut with a saw because a saw works by scraping away the wood a tiny bit at a time.

Wood has its own special scale of hardness called the Janka scale. it measures hoe much force is needed to blast a metal ball into the wood.

To give you an idea of the scale, super-soft balsa wood has a rating of 100. Pine wood which is often used for furniture and floorboards has a rating of between 500-600. The Aussie Buloke has a rating of 5060