Reviews for Granadillo 4/4 Lumber

I got some of this for another project, but that’s on hold so I took some scrap and cut it to 3/4” for a little scroll saw project. It’s a beautiful wood and looks nice in small stuff, but it’s awful hard on scroll saw blade. I worked with some cocoboloa years ago, and they say this granadillo is the same stuff. This seems harder and heavier but its been a long time so maybe I’m wrong.

For turned pieces, they come out looking like swirled milk chocolate marble, smooth and shiny, and that's even before sanding! Where to be especially careful is with routing. Whenever possible, go with the grain. Splinters from handling the rough boards can get easily infected. Pull them out and wash your hands as soon as possible. The resins in this wood can interfere with the curing of polyurethane, so an undercoating of shellac is recommended. I usually use shellac and then one of the so-called water-based polys, which are really acrylic. They're fine as long as you're sure it will never come in contact with alcohol. A top coat of real polyurethane works well with grandillo, using shellac and acrylic as undercoats. This wood is so heavy that it's impractical for furniture that would need to be moved. I made a butler tray table with granadillo and it was way too heavy. Screws inserted into the wood can be a problem. If the pilot hole is just a little too small, it will crack the wood, unlike other less dense hardwoods. The boards tend to come in smaller widths, so if wider boards are needed, you'll be doing a lot of joining. If planing these boards, take it slow with smaller increments between passes. For sanding on the lathe, your final sanding should be 400 grit (the wet-dry paper works very well dry). Don't fret over the any fine, residual, sanding marks as they disappear when applying shellac. I am currently using this for a colonial spinning wheel. It will be 50% heavier than it's identical spinning wheel done in walnut.

Very nice grain pattern. Perfect for a small box

My specialty is making colonial spinning wheels, trying to sell them on Etsy and I actually sold one of them. The walnut ones seem to be the most popular but the sapele ones are much better as it's a denser wood. A few years ago, I made a butler tray table out of granadillo. It was very heavy. I made the mistake of lacquering it and it crazed, so I made another of sapele and used polyurethane instead - much better. But getting back to the spinning wheels, I thought that the increased mass of the granadillo would make for a better flywheel. Granadillo isn't easy to work with but on the lathe, it looks gorgeous before even being sanded smooth. It looks like a dark walnut with wavy, reddish lines in it. When planing it, take tiny bites or you will quickly wear out the knives. Coming out of the planer, it looks smooth, almost like a dark, polished marble. For pieces too wide for the planer, a drum sander works the best. Splinters from handling the boards have been a problem. They are more irritating than sapele and getting them out of my hands has required using a magnifying glass. When turning granadillo on the lathe, the increased mass of the particles is immediately noticeable. The particles travel further, bouncing off of my lab coat and then going up inside my face hood! Turning it is much easier than walnut and better than with sapele for a phenomenal appearance at the end. Granadillo boards are not very wide, so you will need to join them. Since the wood is so dense and heavy, I don't recommend using it for large projects like tables, which would be difficult to handle and move. You wouldn't want to stain it with anything. I'm not sure about varnishing it since the wood will be harder than any consumer-available varnish.

Very happy with the wood. The only issue was one end of the package was open upon arrival. May have been due to shipping during Christmas season and the associated handling "love". Anyway thanks again.

Wood arrived ahead of schedule and was in excellent condition

package arrived slightly worse for wear but lumber was in good condition. Nice color, have ordered another shipment.

I wasn't familiar with Granadillo, never workd with it. Decided to use it in a Chess/Checkerboard Project as the "dark" squares. I had thje Staff at the Phoenix Store pick out a piece for me. Needed a minimum of 5" wide X minimum of 42" long. Recieved a great piece! Could not have picked out a better piece if I was at the Store. Great job.

Ordered 4 different species of wood. On time delivery, wood was in excellent shape with very little waste areas. Surfaced and trim to my request.

When I ordered first I had miscalculated my needs. The guys at Woodworkers Source promptly processed my new order in short order and I received my second order in time to keep my project going.

Beautiful straight boards with great grain patterns.

Very dense hardwood with gorgeous color and grain pattern

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