Tigerwood
Tigerwood is a rare exotic heavy dense wood that delivers a solid sharp tone—and might be remarkably buoyant.
The heartwood is a bronze color highlighted by dark variegated streaks. The tiger-like grain is typically interlocked, but sometimes straight. The quartersawn wood produces an attractive ribbon pattern in the grain with alternating zones of dark and light wood figuring. The grain is certainly intriguing. But it also makes for a rough surface. Still, players clearly like the solid tone and weight.
Bone Rattling Facts
Tigerwood Bones are typically quite hard and dense. Tigerwood is nearly twice the hardness of oak, and sports a high specific gravity of .80. That makes tigerwood a very hard and dense wood—yet some of the pairs we tested were remarkably buoyant. Most of the pairs were quite heavy. None of the charts we found rated tigerwood with a specific gravity greater than 1.0. So just to find out for ourselves, we tossed a handful of bones into a tub of water to see what happens. The results were enlightening.
Test Results
Bones with a predominance of dark grain sink. Bones with a predominance of light grain float. So the weight, specific gravity, density, and hardness of your pair might be significantly more—or less—than our technical specs depending on the ratio of dark v light grain.
Figures below are approximate (but pretty darn close)
