: Hey Rehd, I did try soaking the wood with hot water. I did not try to steam
: it in the conventional fashion. It might work OK, but I did notice that
: the wood became pretty dried out on the surface after saturation with hot
: water. I think that the steaming process might affect the wood a bit, but
: likely only at the surface level, which would be sanded off for the most
: part anyway. It is very dense wood, in a strange sort of way.....different
: than more common woods (in some ways, it seems more like working with some
: sort of phenolic (sp??) material). It does not like to be planed against
: its grain either. It was worth the bit of extra trouble, though. I've read
: of the stuff being used for large solid wood parts in the construction of
: big wooden ships (al la WoodenBoat magazine), so it must be pretty
: durable. I recently experimented with some very thin strips of walnut that
: a friend had (harvested from an old, fallen tree on his property(.....said
: he'd walked over the thing for years, then last fall he cut into it with
: his chainsaw to reveal that beautiful, classic walnut grain!........drug
: it out of the woods and took it to the mill.....it is becoming living room
: furniture!) OOps, sorry....anyway, that thin walnut was pretty flexible as
: compared to the purplheart, but the walnut pieces were very thin and not
: kiln dried like you'd find at most stores. I'll have to find Spidey's
: thread about the steam ironing.......pretty resourceful fellow.....that
: Spidey. I like this forum a lot. You guys come up with the greatest ideas
: to solve all the little problems of this obsessio.....er.....hobby.
: garland

I think they used purpleheart (huge pieces) on the Amistad slave ship for the rudder and other stuff. Learned this down at the wooden boat show in Mystic this summer.

Pete czerpak albany, NY