Abstract

Oscar Jacobs Pienaar

Indigenous hardwoods off-cuts generated by most mobile sawmillers are usually discarded resulting in under utilisation of timber and reduction of profit margins. The traditional indigenous species used in wood flooring have poor regeneration and slow growth thus cannot indefinitely sustain fast harvesting rates. Equipment required to assess the suitability of wood for specific applications is not readily available in Zimbabwe, so a simple abrasive-wear resistance test device was used as an alternative. The device can be constructed in any wood technology laboratory equipped with basic machine tools. Hardness and abrasivewear resistance tests were performed on the radial and tangential faces of selected hardwoods to assess their performance in wood flooring. The results showed slightly higher hardness on the tangential face in poplar and mahogany only and that hardness increased with wood density. This study showed that neither the hardness value nor wood density can sufficiently explain increased abrasive-wear resistance because this is controlled by certain compounds found in wood cavities. However, ranking of selected hardwood species into different wood flooring traffic classes was similar for hardness values and abrasive-wear resistance indices. This illustrated the potential for using abrasive- wear resistance tests device as an alternative technique. Successful use of this device may assist in the identification of alternative species, relieve pressure on commercial indigenous species and facilitate collection of performance data and other wood species suitable for wood flooring.