Teak Flooring : Real or Fake

Teak is so rare and precious wood species in the world and it only can be cut in Thailand now from planted teak forest. There is a huge request for teak flooring and furntiure but the raw materials are not enough. This big request-demand different makes a lot of people to use fake teak to cheat on consumers. We can identify real teak and fake teak from a few points at outside checking.

Teak is one of the most valuable hardwoods in the world with a golden brown luster, beautiful decorative stripes and unique properties, known as the "king of wood". Teak has a natural oil that make it waterproof and will not become brittle, deformed, twisted, bent, swelling and cracking. Teak need grow 50 years for harvesting, very slow growth makes high density and hardness.

Teak flooring is moisture-proof, termite-resistant, excellent stability, is a leader in solid wood flooring. Teak is a very rare species and it can be found in Southeast Asia countries such as: Burma, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, India, and China's Yunnan Province, of which the best variety is Myanmar. While in Africa and the Americas, there has teak (planted from Indonesia native species), but because growing climate is different and it is faster than the tree should grow up, 10 years for harvesting, the oil has dropped a lot, has lost the features of rich oil, material is dry and easy to crack. Therefore, the "African Teak" or "South American teak" is actually not real teak flooring.

Real teak flooring can be identified from following points.

• Texture: Real teak texture looks really obvious ink lines and oil spots, fake teak flooring has no ink lines or ink lines and scattered light.
  

  real teak has ink line and oil stain

• Grain: Real teak grain is shinny or glossy, with oil. Fake teak is dull and dry.
• Weight: Real teak flooring is lighter than rosewood and heavy than hemlock. Fake teak is pretty heavy to make people feel it is really good quality wood.
• Smell: Real teak flooring has a special flavor and you can smell it when cutting it. The smell is very comfortable. Fake teak is either no fragrance or an unpleasant odor.
• Sawdust: Real teak sawdust has very strong oil, feeling soft. Fake teak sawdust is dry and loosing.
• Water absorption: When dropping two points of water dripping on real and fake teak flooring, the water is absorbed quickly by fake teak. Real teak is very slowly, almost no water absorption.
  

  up is real, down is fake

• Soaking in the water: Putting real and fake teak into the water for 24 hours, real teak is no any change and fake teak is cupping and twisting.