I recommend looking at what you buy first. Low quality Ipe is way less dense, you know something is weird when you pick up a board, it's not just dried out more. It will also drill easy and the screw head will countersink itself. But by the time you figure that out, it's too late.

My wife and I had the same concerns. From the advice given on this forum we ordered are Ipe from George at East Teak.

I did not have anything to compare it to since I have never seen any other Ipe in person. Our builder told us he usually gets his Ipe from a local store in town and said it was the best Ipe he has worked with yet.

We are hoping to have the deck finished in June at which time I will post some pics of how it looks.

Good Luck!

Ray

I have not seen any problems with ipe from East Teak,my supplier, but I am intersted in the 4 year old project failing for quality issues in terms of what quality isues actually are.

In ten years up to today I have never seen ipe soft like is described. I am thinking that material was not ipe. The lighter brown color material comes from further outside the center of the tree with darker color progresing to the center that is almost black with a little more weight to it but not all that big a deal. Far as judgeing ipe by its weight or how it drills I have never seen that with the material I use from East Teak. John

I have never seen ipe like that either. Must not have been ipe imo, or the installers did a bad job & they are blaming the wood instead. I have seen 1x6 ipe boards cup when not screwed down properly, but it wasn't the wood's fault.

Al

Ipe is definitely one of the most consistent lumbers in appearance and quality. It is always clear, no knots.

Occasionally, I'll find a weird board in the mix and I set it aside. When I have installed these boards they drill easily, screw self countersinks, the board shrinks more severely than others, and more subject to warping and checking. I have only installed a few pieces like this, and encountered a few more. They may be another species that looks like Ipe and accidentally got mixed in. Or they may be from very young trees that are not ready to mill. Most times I get 100% perfect Ipe boards and have no waste other than off cuts. But it has crossed my mind whether some places are selling this other less consistent wood as first quality Ipe. I do not have any personal experience getting low quality Ipe- one or two boards out of 50 or 100 is not bad quality by any means. But I have walked out of lumberyards after looking at their Ipe because it seemed like there were a disproportionate number of funny looking boards.

My point is to buy from a reputable vendor, or inspect what you buy first.

We did our deck in 2 stages last year. My first buy was through ipedepot.com. While I won't re-hash my issues I gave them the 3 thumbs down and would never do business with them again. My second buy was with George at East Teak. I give them 3 thumbs up. I could not have picked better wood if I had gone down myself. I'm sure you can get opinions on either company. I try to chalk these up to lesson learned.

Hey Mike, It could be that some quality issues exist but I have no way of knowing that DeckMasters has not used any other supplier for ipe but East Teak for a lot of years.

Still a tear out in that short of a time with the worst that could happen with ipe is strange. I am intrested in exactly what the issues were. J.

Wow, I don't even have 3 thumbs.

What was wrong with the alleged Ipe you got from these supposedly reputable vendors?

How are the boards screwed down?

The few Ipe boards I have had quality problems with have been deemed "maybe not Ipe" by other contractors on this forum. I believe them but I have an alternate theory that they are from very young trees. I even went as far as to test several pieces of scrap cutoffs of Ipe I had laying around by placing then in water. I found a couple that floated. That leads me to believe that the floaters were cutoffs from the same boards that I questioned the quality of due to severe checking and cupping. Please elaborate on your experience. What kind of issues do you have?

In buying from the same local suppliers that I have always done. I do beleive that the quality of ipe has gone down in the 8 or so years that I have used it. That said, it still beats any other wood decking that I have seen out there.

Mark

From what I can tell of this situation the boards in question are probably not ipe. There are several species of ipe harvested in Brazil, but all are very durable. The sap wood of ipe is even pretty hard and durable. As to young trees being harvested I do not think that is the case. The minimum size of tree you can harvest legally is 24 inches in diameter at chest height of a man. Most trees are bigger. Sawmills here do not want to even saw small trees as the yeild is not good and not worht the while. Ipe logs do not have many internal defects and the wood is pretty uniform. If the wood is sap wood it would be a light creamy color. But, there is little sapwood on an ipe log to begin with. This is normally an inch or so from the outside of the log. So, I would say that what you are talking about is not ipe. The best test is to smell the wood. Ipe has distinct smell all it's own. I am sure that all installers are very familiar with this. The only other thing that could have happend with this wood is that it came from a tree cut at the wrong phase of the moon. If the tree is cut at full moon the wood frequently gets messed up. That is it is more prone to insect attack, less durable, and splits a lot at the sawmill. You can normally see logs this in logs that have been harvested in the wrong moon by the way the heart spits when the tree hits the ground. Maybe this sort of sounds like jungle lore, but all forest guys stand by it, as do sawmill operators. Since log quality is directly related to sawmill yields it is a very important factor.

Here is a picture of a moon split Massaranduba log. The one in the middle. You can see other logs that do not have this problem in the same pile.

dk

Hi Ya Don!! good to see you again. Your right there is no mistaking that sulfer like smell of ipe along with the green/yellow saw dust.

Up in Oregon they called that a shatter fall they would go to any amount of work falling the old growth trees in a way to keep that from happening. Im pretty sure they dident know about the pull of the full moon but I bet they wish they had. People who live close to the land learn all sorts of things the adverage city dweler never has acces to. J.