random musings on wood turnings

[fazool]

I took making exotic guitar-wood themed accessories from things like The Tree and Lucky Strike.

One thing I made was pens from The Tree. Kinda (peripherally) guitar oriented since only guitar nuts like us would appreciate it.

In the process, I made some non-guitar stuff for family just for fun and had a chance to turn lots of different woods right after each other.


Brazilian Rosewood (made a pen for Harvey leach) - amazing to work with. Flowed so easily and smelled like cafe-mocha a shocking experience.

African blackwood (clarinet themed pen for daughter) - easiest wood I've turned/cut - amazing to work with.

Purpleheart (purple pen for other daugher) - terrible to work - grains get easily smeared and just terribly difficult to get a nice finish although heat makes the wood turn vivid purple.

Mahogany (The Tree guitar themed pens) - the tree was OK, regular mahogany and sapele chattered a lot because of the open grain of the wood.

Black walnut (pen for wife from her childhood backyard tree) - most horrible to cut/turn/finish. Awful to work with. Had very aged wood so quite stable and solid. It was terrible to work and looks modest when done since it wasn't from a center trunk.

[charles Tauber]

For the last 15 years, I've turned wooden sticks for martial arts practice. During that time, I've turned all of the woods you've mentioned as well as olive, padauk, ebonies, katalox, maples, lacewood, Pau ferro, cocobolo, east Indian rosewood, chaktekok, oak, cherry, zircote and others.

I've only found a few woods that are particularly unpleasant to turn or that turn poorly. In my experience, mahoganies generally turn "like butter", but don't take a particularly good polish, though they sand nicely enough. Black walnut turns easily but also doesn't polish well due to its open pores. Purpleheart is generally pretty hard, but turns well and finishes/polishes very nicely.

I don't know how much turning experience you have, but I attribute a lot of success to using sharp tools. These days, but for a roughing gouge, I mostly use turning tools with carbide inserts.