I built an acoustic guitar a couple of years ago. The wood I chose for the fretboard was Gidgee. Boy, by the time I had shaped and sanded the radius and hand cut the fret slots in, my (desk bound software developer) arms were non functional to the extent I couldn’t even hold my phone up to my ears to make a call!
It was only after the fact that the head luthier told me that Gidgee was one of the hardest woods around, and that sanding the radius into the wood was akin to sanding set concrete.
Acacia produce several chemical defenses. The dust of many species of fabaceae is poisonous if inhalated. Acacia is probably in that group also. All the plant is poisonous, specially the seeds.
Maybe, and I'm saying maybe, you weren't just tired.
Substances which can poison at certain concentrations are common in plants and even in crops, but animals are evolved to tolerate appropriate amounts with no detectable lasting effects. Consider most or all medicinal substances - very often first discovered in plants - can poison at wrong dosage.
Without any specific references to inform your warning, I suspect that you have mistaken benign concentrations of ubiquitous substances - plant alkaloids perhaps, as general hazard to health.
And many plants are poisonous at readily-achievable accidental exposure levels. So without any specific references to inform your dismissal, I suspect that you have mistaken specific cases for a general truth.
> And many plants are poisonous at readily-achievable accidental exposure levels.
Of course because there are many many plants.
The wood Gidgee - which "maybe maybe" poisoned someone in an afternoons exposure - is not known to be "poisonous" to the wood-database:
"Allergies/Toxicity: Besides the standard health risks associated with any type of wood dust, no further health reactions have been associated with Gidgee. See the articles Wood Allergies and Toxicity and Wood Dust Safety for more information."
Acacia is not an easy genus, even for specialists. There are around a thousand species worldwide.
Wood-Database talks about 'Gidgee wood' as a product of two species of Acacia: The Stinking Gidgee (Acacia cambedesi) and The western Gidgee (Acacia pruinocarpa).
I couldn't find a mention to the third, closely related and similar Georgina Gidgee (Acacia georginae) naturalised in US, and also known as the poisonous Gidgee. Creates a product very toxic for mammals, small and big, to the point to be sold as rodent poison. Just a few mouthfuls of leaves can kill cattle. I don't know if the compound is stored in the wood (probably not, or we would know it).
Leaves of Acacia often contain Cyanide. Bark can contain Tanines and also alcaloids like DMT, according to the species.
Apple seeds contain cyanide - many plants do. Perfectly healthy levels of tannins are in loads of food. DMT is produced in every living animal, alkaloids are present in every potato and tomato.
We know not to eat tomato vines - you're concerned someone noticeably poisoned themselves from milligrams of wood dust inhalation with sweeping associations in mind. Its a flight of fancy.
I believe it is advisable though to avoid breathing much of any kind of dust, wood, graphite, talc, stone.. by avoiding breathing any where possible.
The fact that many plants were selected for hundreds of years to be more edible that their wild counterparts does not make Acacia more edible in any way.
I don't know if inhalating Acacia wood dust could produce the strange effect of not being able to hold a telephone in your hands for a while, but I'm certainly sure that is a genus that evolved to use fearsome chemicals. Georgina Gidgee mess with the Krebs cycle that provides energy to the cells.
My advise is still the same. Take this in mind if you want to manipulate it, and don't understimate its potential to harm you, even at sublethal doses. If you start experimenting strange sensations when you do some exotic wood work in your batcave at the basement, stop, quit the area and open the windows if you don't have an air extractor.
Even if you trust the provider botanical skills and think that they never would give you a similar and cheaper species of wood by accident.
Next time you do this use a CNC mill, or, if you do not have access to one a router and a guide. Get the best tooling you can afford and use a low cutting speed and air-cool the bit.
In Borneo, the much sought after Ironwood is on the path to extinction. It grows so slowly, 0.5 cm per year, that it isn't replanted after harvesting (poaching). The most sought after trees are hundreds of years old.
Shackleton's _Endurance_ was one of the strongest ships ever built, thanks in part to its being sheathed in "greenheart"[1] which is pretty remarkable stuff.
Edit to note: apparently greenheart isn't quite as high on the Janka hardness scale as the top 10 listed in the OP's link, but its near-imperviousness to the harsh arctic marine environment still makes it an amazing natural material.
Marine lumber generally isn't selected for hardness. Generally speaking, rot resistance is the most desirable characteristic. Apparently greenheart is superior to most other wood in this regard. Teak has traditionally been used for this reason as well, but is getting expensive. Black locust is starting to become popular as well.
Apparently greenheart is relatively rare and prone to exploding when milling, however.
I'm open to correction on this but as far as I recall, the timber used to support some of the buildings in Venice is alder -- a relatively weak wood but with good rot resistance.
TIL! The word "Quebracho" is commonly used in slang in Argentina (it is also the name of a political group), but it never occurred to me (!) the connection with "Quebrar Hacha" (break-axe).
As with other natural resources of Latin America, it was subject to exploitation from developed countries [2], causing harm to Native American people and the ecosystem.
In the book "The open veins of Latin America", Galeano explains the interesting fact that the current poorest areas of Latin America are the ones that used to be richer in natural resources, including "the devastated quebracho forests of northern Argentina and Paraguay".
This reminded me of a YouTube channel where a maker crafts knives out of various substances (including one made from Lignum Vitae [0]). He recently began measuring the Mohs' hardness of the different knives he makes - though I'm not sure exactly at which video that starts.
From the Spanish “quebrar hacha,” which literally means “axe breaker.” Aptly named, wood in the Schinopsis genus is among the heaviest and hardest in the world.
I've been doing a little wood turning lately, and have developed a deep love of exotic hardwoods. Such a guilty pleasure... Really good ebony is an amazing material to work with.
Wood Database is a godsend for getting quality information on interesting woods, but trying to verify a vendor's claims about the identity and source of any given wood is hard!
I once did tech-type work for a lumber importer in the US. They were between #5 and #1 in terms of market share - ie they were big and all of us have likely bought lumber sourced from them at some point up the chain.
One of the more interesting aspects of the business I learned there involved customs, ports of origin, and bribes. The difference between sustainable and/or organically sourced lumber has nothing to do with the lumber itself: it's about the bribe to the harbormaster. Can't get customs to release your barges of Russian birch? No problem, pay him/her enough and it's stamped as whatever you like it to be. You mentioned it was hard to verify the vendor's claims about the identity and source of a given wood, and that old job came to mind. I imagine in the supply chain, once far enough down, the vendor might genuinely believe they are selling you wood XYZ, because the wholesaler told them it was XYZ...but in reality, it all goes back to whatever they paid the harbormaster to stamp the export as.
PS: It's not that the harbormaster is the kingpin in this corruption. They are more like pawns...it was always presented to me as "the way business is done, since way back, everywhere". Just seems to be an accepted bit of dishonesty that everyone involved participates in and tolerates to a degree.
Some of the cheapest exotic wood you can buy is from estate sales for this reason. The person running the sale can look up model numbers and prices for tools they know nothing about. But even one familiar with hardwoods will have a tough time accurately and efficiently labelling a stack of boards covered in dust, wax and bleached by the sun. Obviously some exotic wood is easy to identify (ex. zebrawood) but most look like any other wood after sitting in a garage for years and are usually sold as such.
Hey, thanks for sharing this - I thought for sure Lignum Vitae would be #1. There are a few I have never heard of - goes to show how antiquated my knowledge is. I guess a global market provides new substitutes as some hardwoods become endangered or expensive.
Slight aside, but I love websites like these. They're so reminiscent of the "old" internet. Not filled with ads, pop-ups, and two dozen prompts asking for my email. Loads fast, has useful information, and isn't trying to "game" the search engines with bloated pages.
I hate the ones that have permanent non-scrolling header/footer (title and social media buttons generally) taking up a significant fraction of my phone's screen.
I really think that most designers have poor understanding of the confluence of creativity + functionalism + user needs. For every great designer, there are many who do not understand this balance. Combine that with trying to be trendy, aesthetic, flashy in addition to business/marketing objectives (ads, tracking, GDPR); you end up with a design enchilada as exemplified by the GP's link.
No bullshit, just content. I might be a minority, but to me aesthetics are not as important as the rest of the public values. Aesthetic aspects of design should follow and not lead in Design. Most people write this off as "non-designey" opinion who doesn't understand design which is not true. I think the Swiss in 1960's nailed aesthetics that don't get in the way, especially in layout (Muller-Brockmann) and typography (Frutiger).
These days, in design colleges we have this insane push for retro aesthetics (Brutalism, Vaporware, etc), trying to keep up with current trends as well as increasing pressure for originality. This leads designers to create substandard work in favor of originality. As Paul Rand said, "Don't try to be original. Just try to be good." - This sadly does not work when you're wired to do something different for your senior project as a designer. Designers graduate and create noise thereafter.
Furthermore, some of the burden of bad design should also be carried by the expectations from clients. It is not just about designers.
Edit: I just realized, I apologize how off-topic this discussion is to the original post.
Form _is_ function in a visual medium. If I can't easily parse the information in front of me, then the content is useless; my eyes will just glaze over. That's why we have design in the first place.
I can't stand MPFR's page. There's very little visual hierarchy, so if I go to the page, I have to look through all the text to find anything specific. For a library like this, a big, colored download button would just make everyone's life easier. And it's a small thing, but why put the introduction third, so I have to scroll to see it? Just put a short tag line up top so I know what I'm looking at.
I get the desire to have content, and I agree that modern trends often go too far the other direction, but there is such a thing as fetishizing blandness. It's just a chore to read.
And what exactly is wrong with the Go rebranding? They haven't even changed the website, so I don't even know what your criticism is other than "I don't like modern, sleek logos and typefaces." Because otherwise, Rust and the Go update have basically the same info design (modern type, single tag line, high contrast, etc.).
Also, since when have colleges been teaching Vaporwave? Isn't Vaporwave largely a meme? I don't really see it manifesting in any design trends beyond that domain.
I don't think they do. But Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is led by marketers and it is entirely focused on extracting as much value as possible from every visitor. Hence the need to capture as much information as you can, especially emails
They probably don't; I doubt many designers are thinking "wow, I really want to inundate my user with pop-ups," it's more that analysts have likely got numbers showing that having x calls to action yields y% more subscribers or can produce z% more ad revenue.
I can't stand chatbot popups on websites, because I know what I'm doing and don't like being bothered, but I can imagine that an older or less tech-savvy demographic might find the instant tech support quite novel.
I remember when I was about to show off "THE INTERNET" to my mom when I was a kid. Thinking, what can I show, I wanted to show that you can find anything there!
So I just searched for the first thing that sprung to mind and went there.
A page dedicated to the sounds guinea pigs do. Very impressive demo, I would say.
The ads are not pop-up and they do not interupt the content, since they are only on the side. And they are not visible for most of the page.
Edit: I don't disagree with your point, but it's not as bad as say, most news articles. Also I didn't check to see if there was other trackers, in addition to GA. As it stand, it's an ad-supported page that's usable and that's fine.
It was only after the fact that the head luthier told me that Gidgee was one of the hardest woods around, and that sanding the radius into the wood was akin to sanding set concrete.