It is, however, known that Pistachio wood does have a characteristic, although slight, odor when being worked.
Pricing and Availability
As noted above, Pistachio is rarely, if ever, harvested for its wood. When it is available it will have been recovered from individual yards or orchards. This is uncommon, so availability is extremely limited and prices are quite high when it is available.
In this blog, I almost always recommend several vendors with whom I have done considerable business and in whom I have great confidence. These vendors are: West Penn Hardwoods, Bell Forest Products, NC Wood, Got Wood?, and WoodTurningz.
However, none of these fine vendors offers Pistachio wood.
Pistachio Interior
I located my source of Pistachio wood through standard Internet searching and I would suggest that interested parties try a similar approach. You can expect supplies to be limited and prices high. All vendors I have found are located in California, the center of the pistachio industry in the United States.
I purchased my Pistachio, in the form of rough turned, boiled, and air dried for five year, bowl blanks from Wood From the West located in Central California. Their recently revamped website and store doesn’t list rough turned blanks for sale, but when I was in discussion with the owner about purchasing rough turned blanks, in mid-2015, he had hundreds of them available, so contacting them through their website is likely to be a good source if interested in this format of Pistachio wood. Otherwise, the web store lists instrument backs/fronts and slabs.
One additional current source of Pistachio wood is Far West Forest located in northern California. This company sells reclaimed wood from orchards and homes. All of their Pistachio is currently natural edged slabs. The cheapest pieces sell for around $50.
Woodfinder is an excellent website that is dedicated to advertising wood dealers and I almost always recommend them. However, they do not currently list any sources of Pistachio wood. I can’t claim to be surprised.
Uses
When available, Pistachio is usually sold in quite small pieces. Consequently, the few common uses of the wood reflect this limited availability of size. Pistachio wood finds use as an inlay material, musical instrument fronts/backs, carving blocks, knife scales, and small turned objects.
Sustainability
Persimmon is not listed as being in any way threatened or endangered by the Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendices. However, Pistachio is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as Near Threatened although it does not meet the criterion for inclusion on the Red List.
It is very important to note that this listing by the IUCN does NOT apply to wood obtained from orchards or individual yards. This listed ONLY reflects diminishing stocks of WILD sources of P. vera.
To the best of my knowledge, Pistachio is not subject to any special restrictions by any United States government agency.
I realize that inherent in working with wood is the killing of a part of the natural world that may be slow to return and if I become deeply concerned about this fact, I will have to find a new hobby. I hope that such a time does not come to pass or at least not any time soon. In part because I am concerned about legally and responsibly obtained wood, I am reluctant to buy from sellers outside of well-established and known vendors. I am highly unlikely, for example, to purchase any wood from auction sites, such as Ebay, because of uncertain sourcing and documentation, as well as the potential, even likelihood, of material being misidentified in order to achieve a higher selling price.