West Penn Hardwood sells a good deal of Yellowheart in a wide range of formats including dimensional lumber, including thin dimensions, as well as a variety of turning blank sizes ranging from pen blanks through larger spindles up to bowl blanks. On the top end of the scale, West Penn Hardwoods is selling an 8”x8”x2” bowl blanks for only $14.69. In my experience of bowl blank pricing, this is incredibly reasonably for an imported tropical hardwood.
Bell Forest Products is selling Yellowheart in turning blank sizes from pen blanks up to 5”x5”x2”, the later size selling for $10.00. They also have some dimensional lumber as well as specialty boards that you can hand-pick.
While the two dealers above are personal favorites, Yellowheart is readily obtainable from other dealers in tropical hardwoods, probably including one near you. If you don’t have a favorite supplier that you have worked with extensively in the past, by all means shop around for the best prices and the best selection to meet your particular wood working needs.
Woodfinder is an excellent website that is dedicated to advertising exotic wood dealers. In your search for Yellowheart, 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 near their home in person to hand pick nice pieces at a comfortable price.
Uses
Yellowheart is most commonly used in several specific applications including, but probably not limited to: Flooring, high-end furniture (especially as accent pieces to add color), boatbuilding, other architectural or furniture accents, and turned objects.
Personally, I cannot imagine an entire floor made of a wood that is so yellow, but to each their own tastes.
Yellowheart Sidewall
Sustainability
At this time, Yellowheart is not listed in the CITES Appendices or on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
However, at least one reporter claims that Yellowheart has been placed in the conservation status of “vulnerable” without stating which agency or authority has so declared this status. Without more specifics, I have to question this claim.
Given the extremely limited range of the Yellowheart tree and its considerable popularity, I can easily imagine that Yellowheart could become overharvested and endangered in relatively short order. We as wood turners who like to use Yellowheart will have to hope that this situation is slow to come to pass, if it ever does, and we must also be certain to only purchase Yellowheart from reputable importers and dealers who are likely to have adhered to any and all relevant regulations and rules regarding harvest and export.
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. I am also very confident that the vendor from whom I purchased my stocks of Yellowheart sourced their material legally and responsibly. In part because I am concerned about legally and responsibly obtained exotic wood, I am reluctant to buy from sellers outside of well-established and known vendors. I am highly unlikely, for example, to purchase exotic 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.