I just bought a nice piece of pyinma but I've never played with cue made from it. I've only seen 1 other cue made with it. I was wondering what the density is of the wood an if anything special should be done with it. An if anyone can compare it to another wood. Thank you
info on pyinma
- Thread starter Dildobagnz
- Start date
It depends on which one you have. Pyinma is often given to two different species.
One species is around 60 pounds per cubic foot and is called Asian satinwood, or ceylon satinwood, or east indian satinwood. This species is Chloroxylon swietenia. This species would be sort of similar to bloodwood. The color of this is close to a gold. I used a piece of this for the handle in a cue. I cored it. I lost a backup piece during turning due to cracking. It may work uncored, but I chose to not take a chance and coring helped the weight of the cue since the piece was dense.
Another species that is more correctly called Pyinma is around 44 pounds per cubic foot. The genus for this is Lagerstroemia. This would be similar to hard maple. The color of this is more ashen. I have no experience with this species.
I used a piece of it in my last cue, bought it from Amazon Exotic Hardwoods. Bought it is "Figured Asian Satinwood", looked it up on TheWoodDatabase and they say it is also called Curly Pyinma. Piece machined great, no problems, had fantastic chatoyance, and overall was a great piece of wood to work with, only problem I had with it was it is a very light wood weight-wise, and to get the cue to the weight my customer wanted, I had to add a decent amount of weight to it (like 2 ounces). I will not hesitate to use it again in a cue though.
Jim Notestine
Jim Notestine