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Lonchocarpus castilloi
Machinche
A dense, strong hardwood with bending strength that outperforms even Ipe. The trusted choice for boats, flooring, and railroad crossties across the Yucatán.
View Selected InventoryAbout Manchiche
Manchiche is a heavy, hard-working timber native to the Yucatán Peninsula, Belize, and Guatemala — durable and strong enough for heavy construction, railroad crossties, and flooring, yet valued in Mexico specifically for medium draft boat construction. Its heartwood runs yellowish-brown to reddish-brown, with occasional dark streaks sharply set off from the cream-to-light-brown sapwood. The grain can be straight, irregular, or interlocked with a somewhat coarse texture. It's a genuinely demanding wood to work — the interlocked and often irregular grain calls for reinforced carbide-edge tooling to get clean surfaces and edges — but the payoff is worth it: excellent response to mortising, molding, and drilling, and a high polish once a sealer's been applied. What really sets Manchiche apart is its bending strength, which exceeds that of Ipe, one of the most trusted heavy-timber species in the world.
At a glance
- Black Cabbage Bark
- Balchu00e9
- Chactu00e9
At a glance
- Origin
- Belize, Guatemala, Southwest Mexico, Southeast Mexico
- Category
- Indoor Furniture · Outdoor Furniture · Flooring · Musical Instruments
- Best for
- Medium draft boats, firewood, general home use, flooring, parquet, furniture and cabinets, fine furniture, turning, pallets, packaging, musical instruments, handicrafts
- Working properties
- Somewhat difficult to work manually and in different machining operations due to interlocked and/or irregular grain — reinforced carbide-edge tooling recommended. Excellent response to mortising, molding, and drilling; bonds well with common white glue; pre-drilling required before nailing or screwing.
Spec sheet
Physical-mechanical properties
Laboratory values for Manchiche, referenced against the region's standard hardwood testing methodology.
Density
740 kg/mu00b3
MOE Flex u2014 Elastic Modulus
180,540 cmu00b3
RLE Flex u2014 Elastic Resistance Limit
641 kg/cmu00b2
RR Flex u2014 Rupture Resistance
1,195 kg/cmu00b2
PMOE Com for u2014 Elastic Modulus, Compression Parallel
148,370 kg/cmu00b2
PRLE Com for u2014 Elastic Resistance Limit, Compression Parallel
314 kg/cmu00b2
RR Com for u2014 Rupture Resistance
557 kg/cmu00b2
RLE Com for u2014 Elastic Resistance Limit, Perpendicular Compression
557 kg/cmu00b2
RR Shear for u2014 Rupture Resistance, Parallel Shear
557 kg/cmu00b2
JK Lateral u2014 Lateral Face Hardness
752 kg
JK Lateral u2014 Transverse Face Hardness
733 kg
Where it's used
Built for the demanding jobs
01 — Furniture
Indoor & outdoor furniture
02 — Flooring
Premium hardwood flooring
03 — Musical Instruments
Tonewood & musical instruments
04 — Marine
Marine decking & boat building
Application Gallery
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