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PUCTE
A very heavy, high-density hardwood tough enough for ship keels and bridges — resistant to impact, rot, and termites, with striking olive-brown streaking.
580
Density (kg/m³)
654
Rupture resistance (kg/cm²)
01
Native regions
654
Bending strength
About Pucte
Pucte showcases a striking range of color — yellowish to greenish-brown, often carrying an olive hue, with interwoven grain that forms distinctive longitudinal stripes running through the board. It’s a very heavy wood with high resistance to impact, and its density and natural silica content make it genuinely demanding to work with standard tools — reinforced, carbide-tipped tooling is recommended when cutting given its density, and pre-drilling is advised before nailing or screwing. The payoff is a smooth, glossy finish once you’ve gotten past the roughing stage, along with real versatility: it’s equally at home in heavy-duty flooring, furniture, and interior trim as it is in marine construction, including ship keels and bridges, particularly in environments free of marine borers. Naturally resistant to fungal and termite attack, though not to marine borers specifically.
At a glance
Shady LadyBlack OliveBullet TreeGregory Wood
At a glance
- Origin
Bahamas, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Central Mexico, Southeast/Southwest Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela
- Category
Flooring · Outdoor Furniture
- Best for
Residential flooring, furniture
- Working properties
Resistant to dry-wood termites. Durable in ground contact. Relatively resistant to decay. Moderately easy to season considering its very high density. Prone to torn grain during planing. Difficult to saw and machine because of its density. Capable of taking a very smooth finish.
Add A Footnote To The Table:
*The ITTO technical dataset for Pucte reports somewhat different values across the board (air-dry density 1.02 g/cm³, MOR 1,480 kgf/cm², MOE 152,730 kgf/cm², compression parallel 750 kgf/cm², radial shear 160 kgf/cm², Janka end hardness 2,040 kgf)
Spec sheet
Physical-mechanical properties
Physical-mechanical values for Pucte from the approved Final Content document.
Basic Density850 kg/m³Specific Gravity0.75–0.93Air-Dry Density≈ 69 lb/ft³ (1.02 g/cm³ per ITTO)*Radial Shrinkage4.4%Tangential Shrinkage7.9%Volumetric Shrinkage12.2%TextureFine to mediumGrainOften interlockedWood CharacterVery hard, very strongDurabilityDurableMOE — Bending141,000 kg/cm² (13.83 GPa)Elastic Limit — Bending655 kg/cm² (64.2 MPa)MOR — Bending1,085 kg/cm² (106.4 MPa)MOE — Compression Parallel173,800 kg/cm² (17.04 GPa)Compression Parallel — Elastic Limit375 kg/cm² (36.8 MPa)Compression Parallel — Rupture560 kg/cm² (54.9 MPa)Compression Perpendicular — Elastic Limit600 kg/cm² (58.8 MPa)Shear Parallel — Rupture585 kg/cm² (57.4 MPa)Janka Hardness — Lateral1,065 kgf (≈ 10.45 kN)Janka Hardness — End Grain950 kgf (≈ 9.32 kN)
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