So, you’ve launched out to build a new deck. You’ve ran down to your local lumberyard and gotten some prices on wood. Treated lumber (pine that is), and some plastic looking stuff that is 5 times the cost and ‘kinda’ looks like wood.

Well, neither are fitting into what you had in mind. This is a deck you want to last and actually be wood. Its kind of the idea behind laminate floors that ‘look’ very real, but they are not wood, now are they?

You keep looking and stumble across a product called Ipe. (ee-pay) Wow, does that stuff look nice but wow what a price, right? Yep, nothing of any real quality comes cheap.. we all know that by now.

Ipe is a class of wood referred to as “iron wood” . Wonder why it got that name? I’ll not insult your intelligence. This stuff is crazy hard. If it were not used for decks it could be used as a weapon to kill an elephant or an unlucky intruder. Seriously, you wife needs a stick when she walks? Order a board of this and carve it into whatever you want but be sure to have a diamond blade on hand.

So, where do you get some ipe? Well, you can fly down to South American and cut a few trees down and try and get ‘em back or you can find some quality ipe decking right in the U.S. of A. Nice thing is they’ve removed the bark and everything and also cut it up nice to work for your deck.