Hickory rails for my workbench?

[Mark ten Haaf]

I'm designing a workbench, and I have thoughts of using hickory for the beefy rails. Well, I've never worked with hickory before, and I understand from my research that it can be a !@#$% to glue up properly. I was originally going to build the rails out of hard maple, but I can get hickory for ridiculously cheap. The problem is that I'll have to do quite a bit of face and edge gluing (I hear this is especially tricky in the wintertime). Am I worried for nothing? Also, will my cost savings be cancelled out by the planer knives I'm going to burn through?

[Gary Redden]

I would not say it is hard on anything. I have worked with it alot and have never had it burn up any planer knives, I have even turned it on the lathe and not had a problem. I would not worry about it for a minute. Here are just a couple of exaples of what I have made out of the stuff.

Gary

182202

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