Koa?

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Our daughter and her husband have been making multiple trips a year to Hawaii. They planned to retire there. In one of their many trips there, when they returned they gifted me with some koa. It appears to be beautifully figured wood but that which I have seems to be extremely soft and possibly have a rot of some kind. I wanted to try turning some of it for bottlestoppers and kitchen utensil handles but getting it to hold threads is impossible.

Has anyone worked with koa and is the norm or is it just these boards they brought me?

Thanks!

[brian platt]

Koa is a acacia species that is native to Hawaii. It can have beautiful figure and I've used it for both turning and small flat work. It is often quartersawn to highlight some of the figure. It tends to be smaller trees, and not harvested commercially. I've heard that it can no longer be harvested except for clearing lots, etc.

It is very popular for high end guitars due to it's color and figure. It typically sells for $50-$100 per Bd ft., so it if often resawn into thin pieces to make it go further. It is fairly soft and you often find pieces with Spalting. That is probably what you are seeing. Much like spalted maple, it may need to be stabilized for turning. Small blanks for pens usually do not need to be stabilized, but the grain can be somewhat open depending on how they were cut. Here are a couple of pieces I turned from Koa some years ago. The outer pens are Koa and so it the bowl.

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[Phil Mueller]

I was gifted a rather large chunk that had been in a friend’s garage for some 15 years. Made a couple of table tops with it. It’s beautiful wood. I didn’t find any sort of spalting or rot. It did burn rather easily if I wasn’t careful. I don’t have any experience with recently sourced koa, but I think what you’re seeing is just due to the boards you’re receiving. As far as I know, it is still a very popular furniture wood in Hawaii.

This was a single piece I couldn’t bring myself to cut up:

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This was from a smaller piece I bookmatched:

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[Jim Becker]

Koa...a more rustic presentation with wormy sapwood...

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[Kyle Iwamoto]

I don't think koa is "soft". It's pretty hard. I doesn't take threads well. Even if you stabilize it. It's very chippy is the problem. You can try using CA before you tap the stopper, tap it, apply another coat of CA, and tap it again. Works for me.
It does rot pretty quick (if the harvester didn't sticker it up), and becomes soft and punky. That may be occurring. It's pretty worthless if it got punk. It loses all the chatoyance.

[Bill Dufour]

Does dry koa float in water? The wood from the neighbors acacia did not.
Bill D

[John C Bush]

Hi Ken,
A WWng friend was gifted a Koa off-cut-1 1/2x 3x 60"s- that had been in the back of a shed for years and he gave it to me to use
for laminating the hoops of landing nets. It machined easily and I was surprised how soft and "bland" it was compared to other
Koa fixtures I've seen. Not punky but definitely soft. Steamed and bent just fine. I used it for the inner and outer visible laminations and when finished there was very little exciting grain pattern or color. Maybe that's why it was an off-cut and sat in the back of the shop.

[Bruce Page]

I made this clock for my sister from a small Koa log I brought back from the Big Island. As I recall, (it’s been 20 years) it machined beautifully.
I turned a couple of knobs out of some very punky maple burl once. I had good results soaking the blanks in a jar full of Minwax Wood Hardener for a couple of weeks and allowing them to dry fully before turning.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I was trying to machine a handle that required a thread. My solution was to drill a 1" hole about 2 1/2" deep and then turning a corresponding dowel on the end of a piece of maple. I glued the two together using epoxy and left it over night in clamps. The result provided me with a piece that received threads nicely and looks quite well with their contrasts. I just wiped it down with mineral spirits to clean the sanding dust off before I apply the finish. As luck would have it, the grain pattern in the maple was similar to that of the koa so I aligned those in the glue up process. It's going to look great, IMO. I'll post a photo after it's done.

Thanks for the opinion folks!

[Charles Lent]

I have purchased small pieces of KOA (to fit in my suitcase) from a lumber company near the coast and just off the end of Mokuea St in Honolulu. They have a show room full of shorts that I have picked from. The prices vary, depending on the size and how much figure is in the wood. Be prepared to spend some money, because even small turning blanks for pens are not cheap. It's been 20 years since I've been there, so they might not even be there now, but they had several coffee tables there that were solid figured Koa and were being built for a local hotel lobby. Some beautiful work in those tables. In use, I find that Koa works much like mahogany and is of similar hardness. It chips easily, but cuts very well. The grain of what I've had is similar to mahogany, but it has a brown color and not red. This brown color likely comes from the minerals and rocks on the island, since they all have the same dark brown color.

Charley

[Gene Takae]

Cutting of live Koa is pretty much restricted unless it's on private property-as a consequence much of it is harvested from fallen trees which may have been on the ground for many years so may have started to dry rot.