Does anybody here have any experience using Wenge for floors or on anything else? Reson I;m asking is I currently doing a stairway ..treads and handrail.. and we have about 1000 sq ft of flooring to put down and I’m wondering how it is on saw blades and nailing. TIA
Wayne
Skim-coating with joint compound covers texture, renews old drywall and plaster, and leaves smooth surfaces ready to paint.
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Wenge has a tendency for flat-sawn grain to lift along the softer 'chocolate' lines, and the splinters are just awful. If you can avoid flat-sawn material on wear areas, it will be a gorgeous floor.
It's hard on blades as teak or purpleheart can be because of minerals that get taken up and deposited throughout the wood. No way around that. For being such a splintery wood, it routs fairly well and leaves a shiny surface. It's a very hard wood, so you are best served by taking multiple 'bites' with a router bit. Also being so hard, i can imagine you would have to pre-drill nail holes, but i've used some wenge that was softer than other. (I've used a lot of it, but i can't recall having to nail any.)
It makes a very fine dust when sanding that can stain other woods pretty well, so be sure to vacuum very completely before finishing, esp if you're using it as a contrast to lighter woods. If used as a contrast, make sure the lighter woods are hard like maple or something similar bec orbital sanding will push the dark sawdust into the pores of lighter wood.
I never filled the pores in my wenge, but be aware if you do that the color darkens dramatically when finished. Any glue works well, but use more than usual bec it's very porous, so it's easy to get a starved joint. You can finish with poly, lacquer, oil, wax...no problems with any of that.
I hope you come back and post a picture when you finish. I've love to see an entire room done in wenge. The last i bought (2003) cost me almost $13/BF. Can you tell me what you're paying? Is it custom-milled or did you buy it ready-made?
I'm just the carpenter on the job so I have no idea what the cost is but I'm sure it's not cheep. The flooring will go through several rooms with several changes in direction along with spots with no flooring for carpet inlays. I've done an upstairs handrail so far and it seems to be pretty hard and you confirmed that it will be hard on the saw blades like I thought. I've been working on this trim job for 13 months straight so far and the just delivered the doors today. The bad news is I just started a one month disibility because this job about did me in because of all the over head work on the coffered celings and all the poplar I've shoved through the table saw. I've got a 1953 craftsman table saw .. One year younger then I am..and it's about did me in.
The only wood that the wenge will be against will be painted poplar so I don't have to worry about it darking it but thanks for the heads up on that. If I knew how to post pics on this site I would share some of this job with my fellow nail bangers. So if some body could help me I would be thankful.
Wayne
Unfortunately, posting pics here can be a challenge depending on what browser you're using. If you have "attach files" as one of the choices under the window for typing a reply, click on that and follow the dialog boxes to post the pic. Warning: uploading can take a few moments, so let it work. Keep your pics to about 100 KB and none of the dial-up folks will cringe. Lots of folks here use Irfanview to do that. It's a free download.If all else fails, contact me through the site. I'll send you my email addy, you can send me the files, and i'll resize if necessary and post them for you. If you want to do an extensive thread, i would suggest opening a new post in The Photo Gallery. I hope you get back to even soon. I guess you should be looking on the bright side of still having plenty of work in these hard times. It sounds like a stunning job you can be very proud of.
How do you pronounce wenge?
It's pronounced WEN-####. Edit: the forum administrator has an auto-block on the word spelled g-a-y. How wierd!
I have used it for the soles of wooden planes, but cannot imagine using it for flooring.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
Edited 10/30/2008 12:25 pm ET by Gene_Davis
Gene has it right, despite our great censorship model making a mockery of the very idea of adult supervision.Accent falls on the first syllable, which is probably why he capitalized it, but you can't tell it for sure as censored.
Edited 10/30/2008 12:27 pm by splintergroupie
I built a school clock from Wenge. Lots of miter cuts for the dial face and case using a SHARP 96 tooth blade. I found it to be a very brittle wood and any 90 degree edge has a tendency to splinter. The dust from the ,miter/table saw and router was much more of a "fine Powder" than from say a dark wood like walnut...
Nailing that as a solid wood would be a nightmare. It's hard, brittle, and any nailing is going to cause splitting or damage from deformed nails not going all the way in. For stairs, use pilot holes for the threads, a shank hole and counter sink hole so plugs you make to cover the fasteners will match and hide them.
The wood will turn darker when finished, so plan for abundant lighting.
Bill
From what the Architect tells me it will be all quarter sawn. I've seen a sample and it looks like some pretty dense wood. If nailing it down would likely just splinter it our next choice would be to use flooring staplers. I haven't used one yet but but it seems that's all the builders are using around here nowadays. I Would think it wouldn't split out as easy. I'll post pics when I get it done along with the rest of the house. Archetech says he has Architect Digest interested in our project. :)
Your thread piqued my interest, and I find after surfing around that wenge t&g flooring, while expensive, is available from a number of sources.
Some stuff about it:
Properties:
Wenge is very hard, heavy, and durable, with an excellent dimensional stability. Actual installations may show significant movement in use, however.
Janka Hardness: 1630
Wenge makes for a hard and durable wood floor. It is nearly twenty-six percent harder than red oak, is just under twenty percent harder than white oak, about twelve percent harder than hard maple, and is roughly eighty-nine percent the hardness of either hickory or pecan.
Workability:
Because of its hardness, wenge is difficult to cut and machine. Carbide tooling is recommended due to rapid dulling of tools and cutting edges. This wood sands well and has good holding ability; because of its hardness, however, pre-boring nail holes is recommended. Some solvent-based stains do not dry well when applied to this wood.
Principal Uses:
Because of its great resistance to abrasion, wenge is very suitable for flooring that will receive high use and traffic. It is principally used for parquet and strip flooring, general construction, joinery, and for specialty items. It can be substituted for hickory in decorative veneers and in sporting goods.
Here is a pic clipped from one of the sites I visited. Looks nice.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
Edited 10/31/2008 10:24 am ET by Gene_Davis
Thanks for the info Gene. Good stuff there and will come in handy.
Wayne
Like Zebra wood, Wenge would have to be quarter sawn to make the edge of the grain a much finer look, otherwise the bold grain would be a dark version of the bold grain in yellow pine.
Sounds like there is a beautiful floor coming to your home!! It will be lots of dusty work, but when finished it, in itself, will be quite a conversation piece.
Just remember the definition of an "Architect": ;>)
"Architects are those who use Other People's Money
to Built Monuments to Themselves."
Bill
Edited 10/31/2008 11:06 am ET by BilljustBill
What do you all use for a contrasting wood? I'm thinking of making a bed frame with Wenge for the accents and possibly Maple or Cherry. I have a guitar that has qtr sawn Wenge for the fretboard and it held up very well but I somehow think it might make a better statement if it's not the only specie.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
I had very good luck selling combos of wenge, purpleheart, and hard maple. Black, purple, and white are just very striking together and you almost get a Deco feel out of it. It has a more elegant look when paired with one lighter brown wood like mahogany. The quarter-sawn presentation will finish to almost a perfect black, while the flat-sawn look is more like Gene's picture. I like it better with something like mahogany bec the grain is much more similar. Pairing it with cherry means you see a contrast in how open the pores in addition to just the color. It's not as pleasing to me, but that just my taste.It looks very "African" when paired with paduak or zebra, but the paduak, alas, tends to oxidize to a color not much lighter than wenge.Gene's picture, by the way, is much lighter in overall tone than the wenge i've used, and the creme-colored areas in it are sapwood, which i never used in my projects bec it's much softer and is generally riddled with worm holes, in my experience.
I had been thinking of using mahogany, since the guitar neck is made from that and the combination is a good one. Not sure what grain orientation I'll use, yet, but I suspect that closer to qtr sawn will work best. I do like the contrast of maple with dark woods, though and that has been the front-runner although I did see a really nice piece of Beech that intrigued me and I haven't worked with Beech, yet.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Make sure you wear a mask:
http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/Materials/MaterialsArticle.aspx?id=29311