The project came up as I discovered a new wood species for me, palo santo (Argentina) also known as verawood.
Palo santo is a native wood, very appreciated for its hardness, density and durability, having great resistance to wear even under the ground. It faced great exploitation during the 1900s for its unique properties, consequently it is no longer sold for commercial use, it’s actually restricted/prohibited.
I came across it at a friend’s family farm. I noticed a gate post repair for the distinctive dark green heartwood. Their property dates back to 1930s, and after some research I found a whole bunch of logs, forgotten in time, just used for occasional repairs.
The logs were too twisted to get pieces bigger than 4”x4” in 500mm length. I cut a log in four pieces and brought it to the woodshop back in the city. I had the four legs of my next project, the coffee table.
Along with beautiful grain and a perfume scent, palo santo has the characteristic of oxidizing from a light brown/orange color when sawn to dark green and brown, when exposed to light.
I wanted the design to show the beautiful almost-black endgrain and keep the log shape as much as possible, so I sent them to the turner and started looking for the remaining components.
For the top I got a beautiful 1,5”x15” incienso board, which I cut in half and glued it up. For short aprons I also had incienso 2”x3” and for the long ones I recovered cerejeira wood from an old bed I found.
