I'm in the process of making a presentation box out of pieces cut from an old flooring joist. I'm not 100% sure what the timber is, but I think it's matai.
It amazes me that builders and joiners in Olden Tymes largely ignored the stunning beauty of these native timbers, and instead just wasted them on unseen construction. Our house was built in 1920, and it has rimu panelling throughout, but that's not due to any virtue of rimu itself, but because at the time it was much cheaper than "proper" English timbers for the purpose, and our house was intended for the hoi-polloi, not the nobs.
Old joists and flooring are a good source of some very nice wood, if you can still find them, but you do have to beware of ancient broken-off nails hidden inside. They're getting harder and harder to come upon these days, as old construction timbers and panelling and what-not were mostly just discarded into landfill when the old houses were demolished.
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