Geographic Distribution:
The wood commonly known as Lacewood is known as Panopsis spp. (particularly P. rubescens and P. sessilifolia) to botanists and other scientists.
Panopsis spp. is native to a South America but is especially common in Brazil, in fact, one of the many common names of Panopsis spp. is Brazilian Lacewood.
For the sake of simplicity and common understanding I will refer to Panopsis spp. from here forward using the common name Lacewood.
General Characteristics:
Lacewood features a very conspicuous flecking that gives this wood its name. The wood itself is a reddish brown with grey or light brown rays, which result in a lace pattern when quartersawn. Like other woods that exhibit the strongest figure in quartersawn pieces, (such as Sycamore), Lacewood has the most pronounced figure and displays the largest flecks when perfectly quartersawn; this is due to the wood’s wide medullary rays, whose layout can be seen the clearest when looking at the endgrain.
Lacewood has a fairly coarse and uneven texture due to the difference in densities between the regular wood tissue and the rays.
The grain of Lacewood is usually straight.
Lacewood is rated as non-durable in its resistance to rot and is also susceptible to insect attack.
Working Characteristics:
Overall, Lacewood is a fairly easy wood to work with. Lacewood is reported to take glues, stains, and other finishes well. There may be difficulty in planing, with tearout occuring, because of the high degree of figure in Lacewood. Some of the species harvested as Lacewood can have a moderate blunting effect on cutting edges to frequent sharpening or cutter replacement will be rewarded.
Lacewood is not reported to have any characteristic odor.
Pricing and Availability:
When available, Lacewood should be in the moderate to high price range for an imported hardwood.
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, WoodTurningz, Amazon Exotic Hardwoods, Griffin Exotic Wood, Exotic Woods USA, Got Wood?, and Wood Turning Blanks 4U.
At this time, three of the above vendors (Bell Forest Products, WoodTurningz, and Exotic Woods USA, offer Lacewood but only in spindle, especially pen blank, sizes.
Woodfinder is an excellent website that is dedicated to advertising wood dealers. In your search for Lacewood this can be an invaluable resource provided you use multiple search terms to capture all the possible listings. I can’t speak to the quality of any of the listed dealers, but Woodfinder does have the advantage of allowing searches to be performed based on location which might allow an interested buyer to visit a listed wood dealer in person to hand pick pieces at a comfortable price.
A significant problem with using Woodfinder is that many vendors are listed for woods that, upon further investigation, they do not offer. I don’t know if perhaps once they did and they didn’t update their listings or if some vendors use a standardized list of woods that include most everything conceivable with the idea that once you land on their page you will find something you want to buy even if you didn’t know it beforehand. It happens to me all the time!
Common Uses:
The most common uses of Lacewood include: veneer, cabinetry, fine furniture, musical instruments (guitars), and turned objects.
Sustainability:
Lacewood is NOT listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendices nor is it listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List.
To the best of my knowledge, the United States government does not place any restrictions on Lacewood.