I still have no certainty about this wood. Would Jatoba have been available 50-60 years ago in Canada or the USA?
Incidentally, I wonder if those Robertson screws indicate it was made in Canada?
And I like a mystery like this, good details are coming out with each new batch of photos. So I don't know what else to Everquest but more photos of the wood. The unfinished underside and legs seems to show features more clearly than the finished top side surfaces.
Jatoba is just a guess, of course. There are too many species that appear similar to make an accurate ID without microscopic comparison to known samples. And a lot of them are of similar weights, too. FWIW, I'm not sure the exact specie really matters that much since it was likely imported to wherever the bench was made unless it's of Asian or Central/South American origin.
Leif, my gut tells me that it's a one-off or very limited production from a very small shop in North America sometime around the mid 1970's - early '80's. Jatoba was considered one of the more affordable species back then when exotics were all the rage and the "American Studio Furniture" movement was just taking off (as was use of screws designed for power-driving). Jatoba is lately marketed as "Brazilian Cherry" and is popular for flooring, apparently.
As for Robertson screws, I first started encountering them in the late '70's pretty much exclusively on stuff from Canada where, I think, they had been in use for quite some time by then. Everybody used to bitch about them then because, of course, nobody had the proper bit to get them undone. Things have changed since. The Robertson design has finally surpassed its inferior competitor, Phillips, as the superior and preferred screw for general power-driven woodworking duty with Torx closing in rapidly for specialized applications. Incidentally, the screws in the OP's photos look like they might be a stripped-out hybrid Robertson/Phillips-type like Recex or some such. These were ill-conceived from the start. The sales pitch is that one can use either Phillips OR Robertson bits to drive the screws with the result that neither works well except to mangle the screw heads. They STILL market the crap and, yes, I'm feeling old now!
That makes you feel old? I can piss and moan about the screws that are used in electrical components that are a combo of Phillips, Square, and slotted. The end result is good only for spitting like a watermelon seed.
The fact that it seems like a one off bench or extremely limited production is a complicating factor in the wood ID. It suggests a limit of whatever exotics might have been available at the store, which usually limits the scope. On the other hand, some people have really wide selectlons of exotic wood at the local store d without needing to cater to a market that wants a wood they have heard of, well it could anything.
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