The Hardest Woods
wood-database.com
wood-database.com
It was only after the fact that the head luthier told me that Gidgee was one of the hardest woods around, and that sanding the radius into the wood was akin to sanding set concrete.
Maybe, and I'm saying maybe, you weren't just tired.
Without any specific references to inform your warning, I suspect that you have mistaken benign concentrations of ubiquitous substances - plant alkaloids perhaps, as general hazard to health.
Of course because there are many many plants.
The wood Gidgee - which "maybe maybe" poisoned someone in an afternoons exposure - is not known to be "poisonous" to the wood-database:
"Allergies/Toxicity: Besides the standard health risks associated with any type of wood dust, no further health reactions have been associated with Gidgee. See the articles Wood Allergies and Toxicity and Wood Dust Safety for more information."
Wood-Database talks about 'Gidgee wood' as a product of two species of Acacia: The Stinking Gidgee (Acacia cambedesi) and The western Gidgee (Acacia pruinocarpa).
I couldn't find a mention to the third, closely related and similar Georgina Gidgee (Acacia georginae) naturalised in US, and also known as the poisonous Gidgee. Creates a product very toxic for mammals, small and big, to the point to be sold as rodent poison. Just a few mouthfuls of leaves can kill cattle. I don't know if the compound is stored in the wood (probably not, or we would know it).
Leaves of Acacia often contain Cyanide. Bark can contain Tanines and also alcaloids like DMT, according to the species.
I believe it is advisable though to avoid breathing much of any kind of dust, wood, graphite, talc, stone.. by avoiding breathing any where possible.
I don't know if inhalating Acacia wood dust could produce the strange effect of not being able to hold a telephone in your hands for a while, but I'm certainly sure that is a genus that evolved to use fearsome chemicals. Georgina Gidgee mess with the Krebs cycle that provides energy to the cells.
My advise is still the same. Take this in mind if you want to manipulate it, and don't understimate its potential to harm you, even at sublethal doses. If you start experimenting strange sensations when you do some exotic wood work in your batcave at the basement, stop, quit the area and open the windows if you don't have an air extractor.
Even if you trust the provider botanical skills and think that they never would give you a similar and cheaper species of wood by accident.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorocardium_rodiei
Edit to note: apparently greenheart isn't quite as high on the Janka hardness scale as the top 10 listed in the OP's link, but its near-imperviousness to the harsh arctic marine environment still makes it an amazing natural material.
Apparently greenheart is relatively rare and prone to exploding when milling, however.
It's pretty amazing how much variability there is between samples of the same species.
As with other natural resources of Latin America, it was subject to exploitation from developed countries [2], causing harm to Native American people and the ecosystem.
In the book "The open veins of Latin America", Galeano explains the interesting fact that the current poorest areas of Latin America are the ones that used to be richer in natural resources, including "the devastated quebracho forests of northern Argentina and Paraguay".
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebracho_(group)
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebracho_tree#Quebracho_explo...
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America
Quebracho
4,570 lbf (20,340 N)
From the Spanish “quebrar hacha,” which literally means “axe breaker.” Aptly named, wood in the Schinopsis genus is among the heaviest and hardest in the world.
Wood Database is a godsend for getting quality information on interesting woods, but trying to verify a vendor's claims about the identity and source of any given wood is hard!
One of the more interesting aspects of the business I learned there involved customs, ports of origin, and bribes. The difference between sustainable and/or organically sourced lumber has nothing to do with the lumber itself: it's about the bribe to the harbormaster. Can't get customs to release your barges of Russian birch? No problem, pay him/her enough and it's stamped as whatever you like it to be. You mentioned it was hard to verify the vendor's claims about the identity and source of a given wood, and that old job came to mind. I imagine in the supply chain, once far enough down, the vendor might genuinely believe they are selling you wood XYZ, because the wholesaler told them it was XYZ...but in reality, it all goes back to whatever they paid the harbormaster to stamp the export as.
PS: It's not that the harbormaster is the kingpin in this corruption. They are more like pawns...it was always presented to me as "the way business is done, since way back, everywhere". Just seems to be an accepted bit of dishonesty that everyone involved participates in and tolerates to a degree.
edit: typos
Looking at https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/top-ten-heaviest..., the entire top 10 is heavier than water (#10 is almost 20% heavier; #1 over 35%)
Edit: I don't disagree with your point, but it's not as bad as say, most news articles. Also I didn't check to see if there was other trackers, in addition to GA. As it stand, it's an ad-supported page that's usable and that's fine.
I hate the ones that have permanent non-scrolling header/footer (title and social media buttons generally) taking up a significant fraction of my phone's screen.
Does anyone remember Go's rebranding? https://blog.golang.org/go-brand
Compare that with boring but highly functional Rust Lang's home page and their branding: https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/
Or even better, check MPFR's page: https://www.mpfr.org/
No bullshit, just content. I might be a minority, but to me aesthetics are not as important as the rest of the public values. Aesthetic aspects of design should follow and not lead in Design. Most people write this off as "non-designey" opinion who doesn't understand design which is not true. I think the Swiss in 1960's nailed aesthetics that don't get in the way, especially in layout (Muller-Brockmann) and typography (Frutiger).
These days, in design colleges we have this insane push for retro aesthetics (Brutalism, Vaporware, etc), trying to keep up with current trends as well as increasing pressure for originality. This leads designers to create substandard work in favor of originality. As Paul Rand said, "Don't try to be original. Just try to be good." - This sadly does not work when you're wired to do something different for your senior project as a designer. Designers graduate and create noise thereafter.
Furthermore, some of the burden of bad design should also be carried by the expectations from clients. It is not just about designers.
Edit: I just realized, I apologize how off-topic this discussion is to the original post.
I can't stand MPFR's page. There's very little visual hierarchy, so if I go to the page, I have to look through all the text to find anything specific. For a library like this, a big, colored download button would just make everyone's life easier. And it's a small thing, but why put the introduction third, so I have to scroll to see it? Just put a short tag line up top so I know what I'm looking at.
I get the desire to have content, and I agree that modern trends often go too far the other direction, but there is such a thing as fetishizing blandness. It's just a chore to read.
And what exactly is wrong with the Go rebranding? They haven't even changed the website, so I don't even know what your criticism is other than "I don't like modern, sleek logos and typefaces." Because otherwise, Rust and the Go update have basically the same info design (modern type, single tag line, high contrast, etc.).
Also, since when have colleges been teaching Vaporwave? Isn't Vaporwave largely a meme? I don't really see it manifesting in any design trends beyond that domain.
I can't stand chatbot popups on websites, because I know what I'm doing and don't like being bothered, but I can imagine that an older or less tech-savvy demographic might find the instant tech support quite novel.
For anyone that hasn't heard of it, I find the Kill Sticky Headers bookmarklet helpful. https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
So I just searched for the first thing that sprung to mind and went there.
A page dedicated to the sounds guinea pigs do. Very impressive demo, I would say.