Reviews for Granadillo 4/4 Lumber

I have been planning an "Heirloom Quality" Custom Woodwork project for myself (I normally can't do this with the "Plate as Full "as I have)-I always have Complete confidence in the folks at WWS to ensure I receive Top Quality materials (no matter what I request)- As always - the order was promptly filled, Very well packaged top quality 22 bf. of some of the Best Granadillo I have ever received , I requested 8" width , 84" long - all 4 pieces were more in width and better than any I could find within 400 miles of the "Backwoods in the Black Hills" shop I have in extreme N.E. Wyoming (I have 40 bf. in stock already) but I wanted to use select matching grain for the main visual points. I want to combine some VERY nice Bloodwood, Bubinga and accents of Canary Wood with the main species of view to be Cocobolo (Granadillo). The five objects are to include a Full size Headboard, Footboard- Matching side tables and a Foot Chest . All four boards were perfectly flat, straight and tight grain. As I said this project is for myself, with 35+ years of Heirloom Quality furniture experience (wood and hand forged wrought iron) this will be one that I hope my grandchildren's children will enjoy after I'm building "Harps" in the next life- Thanks to the First Class selections of differant species from WWS- I'll rest very nicely now (and later)

Granadillo is one of favorite hardwoods to work with, this last order was first class, very clear grained, tightly formed color. Every piece was flat, smooth and no unuseable edges or ends.It will smooth out with little grain filler to be as slick as glass. Thanks again WWS for keeping Top Quality lumber shiping my way

The Granadillo was beautiful.

Excellent quality boards of this South AMerican rosewood variant. Clean edges, no useless spots - I got a full high quality 3 BF of useable wood.

I've never worked with a hardwood that was quite this hard. Two issues: 1) This is a very dense and therefore heavy hardwood, so large furniture pieces will be gorgeous but could be a challenge to move. 2) I mostly used tongue-and-groove construction for a table with hinged leaves, but when it came time to attach the leaves to the table with screwed in brass hinges, the screw holes were either too tight and the screws broke off in the wood or they split the wood (and the splits didn't appear right away) or they were too loose and barely held. I didn't expect that to happen and it nearly ruined my otherwise finished project. Realistically, forget about using decorative, brass screws in this wood. Before you drill and screw into your project, first practice on some scrap granadillo.

Narrow widths means that you will need to join many pieces, so you will need the best router bits for this very dense wood. Color varies from walnut to mahogany shades, which makes joining similarly colored pieces problematic. Weight makes this not ideal for large furniture pieces. I built a butler tray table with this. It is a small tablet but quite heavy. The heads of the supplied brass screws would snap off when attaching the 8 brass butler tray hinges. I found some #8, star-drive, brass-colored screws at Lowe's that worked much better, but if the pilot hole was too narrow, the wood would crack and if too large the screws would not fully tighten. I could not drill the perfect screw hole for them. Applying finish to the main table top has been an on-going nightmare, which could be due to my climate, technique and materials. I used Minwax Special Walnut stain, then Gemini semi-gloss pre-cat lacquer. That finish had many defects, especially over the many joined edges of the main table top. Re-spraying never helped and each time I would have to sand off the tough lacquer down to the bare wood and re-stain it. After half a dozen times, the table top is now less than 3/4", which requires shorter hinge screws! It seems that the narrow table pieces finished better with less defects (such as the table base, legs and the narrow leaves). The sprayed lacquer tended to not adhere that well. I finally discovered that sprayed Zinsser shellac as an undercoating to the lacquer worked great. But when I moved the table from my hot and humid shop to my air conditioned house, the lacquer eventually developed many deep fissures, looking like cracked glass. I read that spraying it with plain lacquer thinner would fix this but it did nothing (the thinner evaporated in seconds). I tried re-spraying it yesterday with thinned lacquer with retarder but at 90 degrees ambient temperature, that didn't turn out well. I will try poly on top of shellac next. I am hesitant to recommend this heavy, brittle wood. If you only plan to use tongue-and-groove joints, glue joints and dovetail joints, you might do okay with granadillo. Overall, I have had better success using sapele wood (from Woodworkers Source) for more substantial furniture pieces. Sapele looks like genuine mahogany with beautiful stripes and with just an initial coat of clear shellac, it looks gorgeous and it has enough "give" to put wood screws into it.

Wow, what a beautiful wood. I love working with Black Walnut but the Grandillo grain is much prettier. It has a reddish hue and nice lines. It cuts well and easily worked with tools, even primitive ones like mine. I have made three cutting boards and I'm pleased. The wood takes a nice shine. I will but it again.

Beautiful wood