I haven't posted for awhile 'cuz we were on a long vacation on the other side of the world - Australia. While there, I wanted to find some lacewood, figuring that it's best to get it in the source country. BTW, lacewood is really quartersawn silky oak. Well, most of Australia's forests are now covered by World Heritage status, so there is effectively little or no native lacewood coming out of Australia that's freshly logged. The vast majority of the lacewood is grown in South America. I guess they even ship logs to Australia to saw. Remember that Australia and South America were joined by Antartica a gazillion years ago before the land mass broke up.
So, I figured that I could get lacewood at no more cost by getting it more locally.
I decided to bring a couple of other pieces of timber home (checked through as luggage). The wider piece is fiddleback red gum and the narrower one is fiddleback jarrah. He also gave me a smaller piece of lacewood. The customs officer was a little curious as to why I'd want to carry wood home on vacation, but y'all understand!
It's nice to be back.
Rob