Merbau Decking Suppliers Melbourne

The Best Merbau Decking Suppliers Melbourne

With an abundance of natural oil, this dark reddish-brown hardwood timber is ideal for outdoor furniture and decking.

Merbau is an attractive hardwood hailing from South East Asia, Papua New Guinea, Pacific islands and northern Queensland. Renowned for its natural durability and strength it finds use externally in engineering construction marine applications.

Merbau is popularly found both outdoors in backyard settings as patio furniture, as well as inside as joinery, flooring or any number of applications.

Merbau wood comes from tropical forests; in some instances it may also come from legal conversion or inadequate controls on these forests. Australia does offer certified merbau lumber so we recommend checking with your supplier. Certification systems including DNA tracking can offer assurances that this wood comes from legal, well managed forests.

Merbau trees can be found throughout North Queensland, Malaysia, Fiji, Vietnam and Southeast Asia such as Philippines and Madagascar; their range extending further in Thailand, Solomon Islands New Caledonia Vanuatu Samoa where their natural environment makes for suitable growing conditions. It boasts up to 40 metres height in its prime environment while boasting an estimated trunk diameter of just under 6m with numerous local names, often creating an expansive canopy when mature.

Freshly cut heartwood has an eye-catching yellow-orange brown hue which deepens or reddens with age, in stark contrast with its paler yellow or buff hued sapwood of Merbau, known for being white, pale yellow or buff coloured and vulnerable to Lyctid Borer attack if left untreated; otherwise merbau is relatively resistant against termites as long as its grain remains interlocked or wavy and coarse but even texture which often attracts backsawn material users.

With proper paint, stain, and polish applied it should look fine; however, gum bleed may occur.

Merbau is an adaptable wood product. Used extensively in large-scale construction projects as well as outdoor settings such as barbeque trolleys, it also makes an attractive flooring material with exceptional turning abilities that makes for quick hand tool cutting times – ideal for joinery, flooring and fitting purposes as well as cabinet making, musical instrument construction, boat building projects and carving tool handles.

Appearance

Merbau trees can reach 40 metres tall in their natural environment with trunk diameter of up to 0.6 metres, often forming spreading canopies. Once cut, their heartwood has an initial yellowish-brown or orange-brown tone before darkening into pale to dark reddish brown; contrast this against its sapwood which typically appears white, pale yellow or buff-coloured; its wood grain often interlocked or wavy for creating ribbon figures on radial surfaces and coarse but even texture with distinctive oily aroma when cut!

Merbau has many practical uses across engineering, construction, marine and furnishings – both indoors and out. Common infrastructure applications of Merbau include cross arms, bridge building piles sleepers posts wharves mining timbers as well as framing decking treads framing framing decking treads framing as well as marine application in boats decks vats musical instruments tool handles tool handles tool handles tool handles turning paneling joinery shop fitting cabinet making parquet flooring carving veneer counter and bench tops

Workability

Merbau wood takes well to painting, staining and polishing processes but may sometimes display gum bleed-through or oily patches during finishing stages. Furthermore, its vessels contain yellow coloring which stain fabrics and concrete surfaces when left exposed for extended periods. Although relatively straightforward with hand tools for turning purposes and fairly variable in terms of machine production (though usually clean cutting edges exist), cutting operations sometimes experience blunting or gumminess effects on their cutting edges which might need sharpening regularly (some cutting edges might even blunt). Merbau tends to split easily when not pre-bored prior to fastenings being secured securely on an edge unless pre-bored prior to fastenings being secured securely within.