Lignum vitae wood can also be used to brew a tea. Other names for lignum vitae include palo santo (Spanish for "holy wood") Aura palo santo and "bastard greenheart" (not to be confused with true greenheart "Chlorocardium rodiei", a popular wood in shipbuilding, cabinetry, and woodturning but a completely different timber). Lignum vitae is also one of the numerous hard, dense woods loosely referred to as "ironwood". Lignum vitae is hard and durable, and is also the densest wood traded (density: 1.23 g/cm); it will easily sink in water. On the Janka Scale of Hardness, which measures hardness of woods, lignum vitae
Vickers hardness test values are generally independent of the test force: they will come out the same for 500 gf and 50 kgf, as long as the force is at least 200 gf. For thin samples indentation depth can be an issue due to substrate effects. As a rule of thumb the sample thickness should be kept greater than 2.5 times the indent diameter. Alternatively indent depth can be calculated according to: When doing the hardness tests the minimum distance between indentations and the distance from the indentation to the edge of the specimen must be taken into account to avoid interaction between