Technically a baduk pan, I received this as a gift and I am quite happy with it (no need to aprice it or anything like that), I was interested what wood it was made of. Also is it usual for Korean badukpans to not have a cutout in the bottom?

I thought it could be agathis because it seems to have a yellowish varnish applied to it and I read that agathis boards are typically varnished in yellow in Japan but then it is a badukpan rater then a goban so there may just be different customs.

This is Agathis which has a rather distinct grain pattern. Be careful playing with shell or glass stones because the wood is much harder than Kaya, Katsura, or Shin-kaya and might damage them if you place the stones hard.

For thinner boards (less than 4 sun...around 12 cm or 4.8 inches) it's normal to not have the pyramid on the bottom. My guess is that the wood isn't thick enough to need the extra breathing room. If the legs easily come out of their peg holes you could also convert the piece into a large table board too.

My experience with glass stones is that they start to deform soon enough, it is not a bad thing per-se, and one finds oddly shaped ones all the time after enough use. It came with glass stones so I expect this to happen eventually. I suppose slate and shell would be much more durable, at least the slate, but everything that is used tends to get worn anyway.

I measured it as just over 11 cm thick. When I tried pulling the legs out before they didn't budge. I'll probably find a low coffee table for it because I don't have a habit of sitting on the floor.

Btw, I put it on my electronic bathroom scale and it came out as 12.0 Kg, this includes the feet that I don't know the volume for, it is 1% less than what agathis is supposed to weigh on average according to the Internet. About 2 Kg more than spruce and wood from similar trees. I think that supports that it is agathis, though I am not sure how much variance is possible.

I have a board made of purpleheart.It is w-a-y harder than agathis.

Purpleheart, Amaranth, Peltogyne; Janka Hardness: 2,520 lbf, 11,190 N

Agathis: Kauri, dammara, kauri pine; JANKA HARDNESS: 730 dbf
JANKA HARDNESS - 3230 N (Note there are a t least a dozen species commonly called agathis but they mostly fall within a narrow range of Janka hardness.)

Purpleheart simply cannot be dented with a go stone. You will hurt yourself before the wood can be deformed. It is not possible to break go stones by striking them against wood unless they already have a fracture. I have Ishi Press Japanese top grade 10mm glass stones that are forty years old. I have dropped them on concrete without any visible exterior damage, no chips, no cracks. I have dropped a shell stone on concrete and watched in horror as it (seemingly) exploded -- only a really bad chip! Slate is a freakin' metamorphic rock. It is harder than and will shrug off a fall onto concrete.
Glass, calcium carbonate, and slate are measured on the Mohs Hardness Scale, orders of magnitude harder (not necessarily stronger) than items rated using Janka. Glass is about 5H, slate, 2.5H, and shell 2.0H. However, Mohs scale does not take into account elasticity or malleability. For those characteristics there are other scales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janka_hardness_test
https://askinglot.com/what-is-glass-on- ... ness-scale

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David Bogie, Boise ID
I play go, I ride a recumbent, of course I use Macintosh.

It is good point that wood is typically much softer than go stones. Especially the types of woods that are typically used. I suppose the type of wear and damage that occurs is a combination of many factors. I have often had troubles with deformed glass stones, our club has a mixtures of high quality Japanese glass stones and indestructible ING stones, but it always seem to be the black stones that lose their shape and most of the chipping and breaking is also with the black stones. I think the white glass stones have lasted about as long as the ING stones, but I'd mention that the ING stones were heavily used when we go them. The boards are all plywood and (probably) agathis (they are painted yellow with little grain pattern visible so it is about impossible to tell).

My thinking is that once a glass stone is chipped it is unusable, I have no tolerance for it because people can get cut, but I have seen that most people don't care and probably don't think there is any trouble. The chipped edges are usually not sharp so they may be right.

In this case, because the set was a gift I am more concerned about preserving the board so I don't really mind if the stones take a beating (they came with it and are nice but the could be replaced but replacing the board is kind of like throwing out the gift).