Abstract:
Sago is palm-producing carbohydrate that is endemic to the New Guinea Island covering Papua New Guinea and Papua. This palm species is a special plant to the forest dwelling-people to supply their main staple food of carbohydrate, sources of building material and others. When extracting the carbohydrate from the Sago stem, the hard part or outer stem (bark) are damped as residual waste. Traditionally, these unprocessed barks, approximately 2 cm thick, is used for flooring purposes of their traditional houses. This research is designed to investigate mechanical properties of Sago bark and its laminated beam especially when it is combined with other less used wood species from Papua, Pulai (Alstonia scholaris) and Binuang (Octomeles sumatrana). Three layers of laminated beam of homogenous, and heterogeneous material were made, using three replicate to produce 51 sample in total. The laminated beam produce have dimension of 2.2 cm x 4.5 cm x 35 cm for thick, width and length, respectively. The results indicate that moisture content of beam are 17-19%. Density of single sago bark is 1.1 g/cm3, sago bark beam of 1.2 g/cm3, the combined beam of 0.7 g/cm3, Binuang of 0.38 g/cm3 and Pulai of 0.36 g/cm3. Single layer of sago bark produced the highest of flexural strength (2482 kg/cm2), Sago bark beam of 1392 kg/cm2, and combined beams ranging from 281-1132 kg/cm2
