It is undeniable, Indonesia is one of the wood producing countries with global quality. Various high-quality wood from Indonesia has become the target of craftsmen and wood processors in the world. There are a lot of high-quality wood in this country, one type of wood that is well known is ironwood or by local people called as Ulin wood. There are various distinctive characters that make ironwood always the choice for building materials, furniture, and other products.

Various Names of Ironwood
Ironwood is native to Indonesia. This type of wood grows in many areas of Kalimantan, eastern Sumatra, Sulawesi, and the islands of Bangka Belitung. Due to the wide distribution of its growing area, ironwood also has various other names locally, such as tubulin wood, tulian, bulian, or telian. In South Sumatra, this wood is also known as onglen wood.

Ironwood Properties
Ironwood is a hard wood, it is called ironwood because it is difficult to nail or saw, even though it is easy to split. Other characters that are also prominent are its heavy weight, resistance to changes in temperature and weather, seawater resistance, and a distinctive aroma. In addition, ironwood is very durable, insects such as termites do not want to approach it. Even in the wood has submerged or buried for a long time, this wood remains intact, not rotten and with excellent quality. However, with all these advantages, ironwood grows very slowly, only about 0.05cm per year. But when mature, ironwood can be towering and up to more than 1 meter in diameter.

Ironwood Varieties
Until now, there are at least four varieties of ironwood: lime iron, wax iron, tando iron, and copper iron. The difference in this variety is based on the color of the stems. In succession, the color of ironwood stems from lime to tando are light brown, dark brown, reddish brown, and yellowish brown for copper. At this time the common in the market are tando and copper varieties.

The Benefits of Ironwood
Ironwood is commonly used as a building material for traditional Dayak houses in Kalimantan. When modern communication technology and electricity were introduced in Indonesia, ironwood poles were used as telegraph poles, telephone poles, and electricity poles. The ironwood logs were also used as railroad sleepers (before they replaced with concrete). Another benefit of ironwood is for high quality furniture materials, dock construction, and traditional boats.

Ironwood Material for House Construction
In terms of construction, ironwood is multifunctional wood. Ironwood can be used as a material for the manufacture of foundations, floors, walls, doors, stairs, windows, railings, roof structures, to the roof slats themselves. As the foundation, floor and walls of buildings, the types of ironwood used are copper, tando, and wax iron. Meanwhile, if you want to get a shingle as roofing material, then you can choose the ironwood lime. Until now, ironwood is still often used for contemporary house designs, both in certain parts of the house or as a whole as cottage buildings or villas in luxury resorts.

–sh