What is bass wood

[Penno]

Well i have looked up on the net and other places and cannot find the elusive bass wood,my only thought is it must be some kind of balsa wood,which is hard to get in a descent size in Brisbane,Queensland.
Moslty used for model plane building.
Any suggestions please

Thanks

Penno

[Just Carving]

Basswood (one word) is also known as Tilia Americana. It is mostly grown in the USA. However, a comparable wood is known as Linden or Limewood in Europe--specifically, summer limewood and winter limewood. The first is tilia platyphylos, the second is tilia cordata.

My suggestion is to find a wood that is in the Tilia family and see how that carves.

BTW--you can also search on carvers here at the forum from Australia and see what they're using.

Hope that helps.

Bob L

[Paul_Guraedy]

Basswood is from the American Linden tree a species of tilia. Try looking up this family and adding Australia. You will get a number of hits.

[Dicky]

Basswood is a member of the Linden family. The one North American carvers use is also called American Linden. Another name for them is Limes. The latin name for the family is Tiliaceae. Hope this helps.

[Just Carving]

I just found this link. Click on it and I think it might be of some big help in learning about what wood to carve.

Australian Carving Woods, Woodcarving

[Claude]

Here are the three listed in the US:

Tilia americana Fact Sheet
Tilia cordata Fact Sheet
Tilia petiolaris Fact Sheet

Claude

[Mitchell]

And Basswood is definitely not similar to Balsa. I would not recommend trying to carve Balsa.

[Penno]

Originally Posted by Just Carving

I just found this link. Click on it and I think it might be of some big help in learning about what wood to carve.

Australian Carving Woods, Woodcarving

Thanks guys i will chase up hoop pine or linden,i tried a piece of balsa and it is not very user friendly.
I did carve a troll on the weekend out of balsa fairly hard to get a nice finish.

Penno

[Blinky Bill]

G'day Penno,
Welcome to the forum, hope you enjoy yourself here. I also tried finding basswood locally, but the only thing I could find was wooden slat venetian blinds made from Malaysian basswood.....bit skinny for what we want eh? Found myself settling for Jelutong, another Malaysian import but fairly easy to get, and carves quite well, comes in a whole range of sizes, is light, soft, and almost grain free, it's also reasonable at taking detail. Hope this is of some help mate.
Regards
John

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

I don't know if it was true or not, but awhile back there was some talk of jelutong possibly have agent orange in it? I would be very leary of the dust just in case. (at least I think it was agent orange, obviously had to be talking about the far east)