Timoho (Kleinhovia hospita L)

[A. G. Maisey]

The tree that produces timoho may not be an endangered species, but timoho wood with good markings, suitable for use in a wrongko, is virtually non-existent in the markets in Central Jawa.

Up to a few years ago there were plenty of old Jogja wrongkos from good timoho wood, but in recent times these have just about dried up---you can still find them, but they are not nearly as plentiful as they were, say, prior to ten years ago.

[fearn]

Dear Alan,

Actually, your last observation is a good lead-in to a question and an observation.

The question (perhaps also to Newsteel): how do you stabilize spalted timoho wood so that it isn't so brittle?

The observation: I'd guess that the decrease in marked Timoho wood is probably due to what might be termed "improved tree hygiene." I'm guessing that the rules on the wood harvest have changed, and it's either legally no longer acceptable to sell insect damaged wood (perhaps because someone decided it was a good way to spread insects, for instance). Alternatively the use of insecticides and fungicides (or ideally non-chemical tree-growing methods) has become more prevalent. A third possibilitiy is that timoho wood is getting harvested too young to have the patterns. Not sure which of the above is true, but it could be a mix of all three.

In any case, a keris maker or two needs to have a little chat with some wood suppliers and the timoho growers, and if possible, figure out a premium price for the patterned wood for the wrongkos. Then they'll start supplying it again. If there's a legal reason why patterned wood is no longer available in the wood trade, it might be useful for the wrongko makers to start growing a few trees themselves, as a supply.

my 0.02 perak,

F

[A. G. Maisey]

In about 1984 I became acquainted with a tukang wrongko whom I got to know very well.He was the grandson of a very famous tukang wrongko, and he knew the trade intimately.Between 1984 and 1997 he was only able to obtain a single piece of timoho that he considered suitable for use in a wrongko. From memory I think he got one normal size wrongko and two of three small wrongkos from this piece of wood.He worked alone, rather than as a member of a community engaged in making wrongkos, and this perhaps limited his sources of supply to a degree.

After 1997 I became acquainted with a different tukang wrongko, once again the grandson of one of the old-time greats.He refuses to try to obtain wood and will only work on wood provided to him by a customer. Between 1997 and April 2007 he had not worked on any new pieces of timoho wood.

During the period from 1984 until the present it has never been easy to obtain quality wrongko wood.When there was a lot of forest being cleared in Sumatra and Kalimantan there would be spasmodic floods of acceptable wrongko wood, but tighter governmental controls over the last 10-15 years have seen these inflows of material cease.

One of the woods favoured in recent times for wrongkos is burl teak (kayu jati gembol) and there is still a dribble of this material. Another popular wood is akasia, and there is a reasonable amount of this available. Once you remove these two woods from consideration, there is almost nothing else with good figure that is currently available.For a long time woods have been imported to fill the demand . In the absence of wood with good grain, other common woods such as sono, mahony and cendana Jawa are used, however, even good sono has become difficult to obtain.

As to the possibility of the dark spots in timoho continuing an active rotting process. I have encountered only two timoho wrongkos where the dark spots had rotted away. The rot was not confined to the dark spots, but took considerable portions of the light wood as well. Both these wrongkos were Balinese. On timoho wrongkos that I have re-finished myself, I have never encountered any unusual difficulty with working the dark areas of the material; where a dark spot intruded to an edge, this edge was no more fragile where the spot was, than in the area around it. I do not believe that any special treatment is used by tukang wrongkos to treat timoho prior to use.

According to Haryono Haryoguritno, at the end of year 2000, the trade price for a piece of timoho with kendit grain, sufficient to make a wrongko, was equivalent to 7 to 10 grams of gold. This was for untried material only, that is, the wrongko had not been shaped, thus there was no certainty that the material would provide a wrongko with a good kendit. The market value is already there, if good timoho were available, it would be appearing in the market-place, but this is not the case.

In Indonesia "legal reasons" do not apply. If timoho with good grain existed, it would appear in the market-place.

[fearn]

Thanks Alan,

That information helps a lot.

If patterned timoho wood is that valuable, I'd suggest going into business making some. It looks like it's easy to grow (link), and it has uses beyond wrongko wood, which means that the whole tree could be used. What someone needs to do is to hook up with a mycologist to culture the fungus responsible for the staining. You get some trees, wound them appropriately (doesn't necessarily have to be with an insect), and inoculate with the staining fungus. Harvest a year or two later. The return from the sale of the wood would be enough to pay for the mycologist's services.

This is just a thought, not a solicitation to go into business. There are people who make a living inoculating wood with commercially important fungi, so in theory this could work. If patterned timoho wood and teak are that valuable, it would be an interesting thing for someone to try.

F

[David]

Originally Posted by fearn

This is just a thought, not a solicitation to go into business. There are people who make a living inoculating wood with commercially important fungi, so in theory this could work. If patterned timoho wood and teak are that valuable, it would be an interesting thing for someone to try.

Well, it is that valuable, but in a fairly limited market, so i am not so sure it would end up being a worthwhile venture.

[A. G. Maisey]

Well Fearn, if you're going to try this, I strongly suggest that you do it somewhere other than Indonesia.

Amongst the people who work with this wood there are two opinions as to the cause of the dark spots:- probably the greater number of people believe that at some time the tree has been damaged, perhaps by a cut, or something else that has caused a wound, and that before the injury has healed, water containing lime has entered the wound. The second group of people believe it is a sickness that can affect any number of trees and plants, nobody gets specific about what sort of sickness.

Many years ago I read an opinion somewhere that it was caused by fungus.

I'd never heard the term "spalting" before I read it here, so I've checked it out. From what I read, spalted wood seems to be quite a bit different to timoho with dark patches. I can recall several wrongkos I have worked on where the wood in the black patch was considerably harder than the surrounding wood, which is the opposite of what people tell us spalted wood is like.

[fearn]

Hi Alan,

Well, I'm nowhere near Indonesia and have no plans to immigrate, so it's not an issue. Creating spalted wood is the kind of nutty thing that mycologists do (they're into that sort of stuff), so it's a potential win-win, if someone has the land and trees to try an experiment. It doesn't even have to be timoho or teak, although that would be traditional.

As an aside, I do have a spalted walnut walking stick. I cut it from a sapling that was in a public right-of-way, and the people clearing the area wounded it with a chainsaw. The spalting was black, and it grew around a bunch of chainsaw slashes exposed to rain, and left sitting for a year. It's about as strong as the walnut around it.

That goes towards the source of the dark stain in timoho: it's entirely possible that it comes from tree wounds open to rain. I'm not sure whether the lime is necessary, but it would be an easy enough experiment to try. It might be that alkaline rainwater in a wound favors the particular fungus that stains the wood dark, and if so, it would be *really* easy to start producing stained timoho. Just slash the bark right before a rainstorm, slather on something alkaline, and let it go.

Spalted wood, in the European sense, specifically refers to a particular wood rotting fungus that leaves a blue stain. It also weakens the wood, but the unusual color makes it a worthwhile tradeoff. There's no particular reason to think that other fungi that stain the wood will similarly weaken it, although they might. A lot of fungi deposit dark stains (usually melanin or something similar) as they grow.

It's an interesting aside. I'm enjoying this, because I didn't know enough about keris culture to realize how important patterned wood was.

F

[kulbuntet]

To Marcokeris...

By the way..love the mendaks on the pics.