they are very fast growers
ideal timber for a lot of things
Easternpacific,
Paulownia is pretty amazing wood. It is one of the world’s fastest growing trees and is harvestable in 8 to 12 years. When you cut wood in a plantation, you cut out the tallest trees first and a new sprout comes from the root. The second growth grows very fast because the root structure is already there. Then you do it again for the third growth.
When you read about the wood and see the pictures it seems too good to be true. And it is in one way. The paulownia does not grow to plan if they are not in soil that they like. I have been to many plantations and some small ones have slow growing trees that are nothing spectacular. It seemed that these people planted the trees without checking the soil and learning about proper fertilizing.
On the other hand, I have been to some amazing plantations where I bought great 3 meter lengths from four year old trees. The plantation where I bought my wood from was planted in 1992. The trees were cut in 2001 and they were huge. The second growth is on the way and he could cut now. I wish I could figure out how get the photos he sent to me on swaylocks.
I have heard that Greenpeace says that paulownia converts more CO2 to 02 than any other tree. This makes since they grow so fast and the leaves are HUGE.
In Australia Paulownia is not a popular wood now and there are several large plantations with lots off wood becoming available soon. The price is reasonable for large amounts. My big goal has been to purchase lots of wood that has been milled with surfboard construction in mind and distributing it. I could send a containers to parts of the USA and Europe. Along with the wood I would send instructions on the different ways to make surfboards from paulownia. That has been the long term goal.
Thanks, Tom Wegener
Thanks so much Trucker for starting this thread.
…and thanks so much to Roy and TomW for adding their views - this to me is what Swaylocks is all about.
I’ve been working through the concept of “more” environmentally friendly boards for a few months - even started a thread that went down hill very fast with a few guys adding “there is no such thing as an environmentally friendly board”.
I’m stoked to hear the views on this thread - I am but a novice in this area, but my education is on its way 
-Cam
Great thread and now featuring Tom Wegener!!
Tom, 2 easy ways to feature your photos here are
-
go to photobucket.com and get an account going–very simple to do and very simple to upload your photos–once you’ve loaded them onto the site, you right-click on your image to isolate the photo onto its own page, copy that web address, and paste it into the box that opens when you post here and click the image button on the post page, subtracting the http: prefix
-
to load them into Sway’s as attachments while you’re posting, assuming they’re a format that is supported, like JPEG files
Welcome, for sure. I’ve visited your site many times and read and re-read many of your pages
Greg
Here’s a link to a Paulownia growing site, amazing looking trees!
http://www.paulowniatrees.com.au/Growing.htm
For New Zealand boardbuilders here’s a link to a nursery in Paeroa, they have Paulownia trees from $6.50 each, not bad for a tree which will produce enough wood for 6 longboards (A cubic metre) within 7 or 8 years !
http://www.productive-trees.co.nz/pricelist.html
We can fit about 20 Paulownia trees on our residential section, and have the right soil
20 trees should be enough to suply an 18 longboards a year building habit … . . stoked !
Paulownia is also sometimes known as kiri in australia, it can be sorced thru good boatbuilding timber yards and is about 2/3rds the price of WRC. Another source is thru some window blind companys that use 50mm by 4mm slats for “blinds” only problem with the slats is that they have a rounded edge which needs to be squared up to get good fit up.
I have been using Paulownia for a few years in all sorts of marine craft builds, its a great wood, light strong, doesnt out gas during laminations as much as balsa or WRC, doesnt suck water to the extent balsa does, doesnt suck resin as much as balsa. can be worked real easy with hand tools, plus those big leaves and flowers look pretty. However I dont think you would be able to build a 1.9 kg compasand out of it.
Most Paulownia in Oz was sourced from china however as the aussi crops come online more local timber is comming avaliable, accoarding to my timber supplier the better stuff for boat building comes from the slower growing trees 15-20 years, as it has a tighter cell structure but denser, this probally is not applicable to surfboards, I would luv to know your throughts on it Tom?
Seeing your boards on sprout insprired me to build a HWS, thanks for the kick start into surfboard building.
cheers
Roy,
I am so happy that you agree that paulownia is good for surfboards! I have learned much from your comments on approaches to glassing boards. There is really a lot of great stuff outside the square. One time an excentric guy showed me a board glassed with epoxy and cotton cloth like you said and I was blown away by the lightness and stregth of the board. Then the excentric guy moved on and I never learned what he did.
I have tried to grow paulownia on my property but it has been anticlimatic. There is only a thin layer of good soil on top of clay. The indiginous trees like quandon, silky oak, and ceder are doing great but the paulownia seem a bit stunted. I haven’t done the right thing with learning about what I should do to help the trees. But none of the paulownia in this area has done any better. It may be the clay, or the lack of a real winter, or maybe we are not growing the best type of paulownia. There is so much to learn. I hope you have more success.
Thanks for doing so much to turn people on to the wood surfboard stoke!
Tom Wegener
Greg,
Thank you very much for the photo info.!
Aloha Tom - Thanks for the report. You gave some great information.
Thank you so much to everyone for all of the info! There are a number of great points in here, and I second the creation of an enviro section in the swaylocks discussion forum. Swaylocks could easily become a well-organized source of envi info for shapers anywhere in the world. I believe this is the main issue of the immediate future (lest we end up being discovered under a layer of plastics and Hummers). Simply having the info out there and well-organized will naturally encourage a lot of people to go in the right direction.
Thanks again to everyone.