favourite flavour of wood ?!?

[Walt Caza]

After working with miles of foul tasting MDF, I recently did a stair
rail project in Mahogany. I had forgotten how I enjoy the taste of
machining real wood. When I told someone about it, they were puzzled
that I referred to how the wood tasted.

So I figure (bad pun) that only a fellow woodworker would know how
sweet Mahogany tastes coming off the tablesaw blade in the morning.
With all the exotics available, do you have any favourites ?
(pardon my Canadian spelling)

Walt

[glenn bradley]

It might be a California thing and I do enjoy the smell/taste of other species but fresh sawn red oak always smells like home.

[Frank Pellow]

I like spruce -in pieces of wood where some of the gum is still present.

Why should yo appoligize for Canadian spelling? :D

[Laurie Brown]

Weird, I was having a similar thought the other day as regards to the senses and wood. Like you, I've done alot of work in MDF and recently I've been making a cabinet out of oak. I was working on the stiles and rails for the doors, and put two of the pieces together and they made an almost musical sound. Instantly it reminded me of when I was a kid, and used to play with wood blocks, and the sound the blocks made when they hit each other. It's something that hasn't occured to me since.

I can't say I like the taste of any sort of wood dust, but I definitely can enjoy the sound wood makes. ;) Now I'm considering a wood windchime project....

[Dennis Perry]

It's not zebrawood:D

Dennis

[Steve Wargo]

Working with a lot of hand tools I really love mahogany, but Walnut has a great smell too it.

[Bruce Volden]

Hands down!! Cherry is my favorite, even under the laser machines it just plain smells sweet.


Bruce

[Larry Fox]

Never paid attention to the taste but I love the smell of cherry and - surprising as it may seem - poplar. I have been cutting some veneer-core ply lately and I can really smell the poplar and I find it pleasant.

As Steve points out, Walnut also has a great smell.

[Alan DuBoff]

Walnut is by far my favorite of most all woods to work with, it is just nice to do anything with. Cuts, carves, does everything nicely.

Cherry and Maple are also 2 that I like to work with, but Walnut is without a doubt my favorite.

[Doug Shepard]

Never paid attention to the taste but I love the smell of cherry and - surprising as it may seem - poplar. I have been cutting some veneer-core ply lately and I can really smell the poplar and I find it pleasant.

As Steve points out, Walnut also has a great smell.

Ditto on the poplar. Sometimes the dog and I sit down and gnaw on a stick together. Great stuff.

[Bruce Shiverdecker]

Since I'm one of the lucky ones and am not affected adversly by "toxic" woods, I can call my two favorites:

Cocobola and Walnut, with Cherry coming in a Close third.

Bruce

[Ron Robinson]

Very Weied,

I was just thinking last week while making a frame that I love the smell of walnut while I'm working. Smell is a powerful memory trigger and machining walnut puts me back in junior high wood shop.

Ron Robinson

[Frank Fusco]

Depens on the project. For small items, like pens nothing beats Bethlehem Olive wood, the aroma is heavenly. I enjoy the smell of aromatic red cedar even though I am sensitive to the dust.

[Alan DuBoff]

Depens on the project. For small items, like pens nothing beats Bethlehem Olive wood, the aroma is heavenly. I enjoy the smell of aromatic red cedar even though I am sensitive to the dust.Frank, your mention of pens reminds me of a pen I made out of Amboyna Burl last year, it was certainly one of the nicest smelling woods to work with, a pleasure. Not very common and pricey, but the smell is ever so wonderful.

[Kevin Jaynes]

Walnut is by far my favorite of most all woods to work with .....

Besides wet white oak dust, what do you use to get the stain off your fingers?
I am speaking from the standpoint of a sawyer .... maybe woodworking with it doesn't have the same effect I can't remember as I haven't built anything with it for years.

My favorite wood to cut on my sawmills is Eastern Red Cedar, because it cuts easy and doesn't eat blades as fast as hardwoods. But of course, opening up a sycamore that has been laying around spalting for a year is alway a joy too! :D

[Paul Held]

I've always liked Walnut and Paduk and really disliked zebrawood and spanish cedar. Paul

[Al Bois]

I generally dislike using any pine in my projects, but love the smell!

For real wood, my favorite would have to be cherry. Ala George Washington, I actually did cut down one of my grandmothers cherry trees when I was a kid. Right on her front lawn while everyone else was inside. Yes, the saw was my first real tool, which I got for Christmas that year. Ever since that day, I've had a taste for bloo.... I mean.. cherry:D

[George Leicht]

I milled some elm last night. It has a faint, but pleasant aroma. It sort of reminds me of old fashioned horehound candy.
George

[Ron Blaise]

But I do know that Cherry (Eastern Black) smells very sweet when you are milling or sawing it. The most aromatic wood I have ever worked is Eastern Red Cedar. I have a couple of hundred feet of that drying in my shop and have to air the place out before I can work in there. Walnut has it's own nutty smell, rather pleasant too. Green Oak (to me) smells like horse piss when it's drying so that stuff stays outside for a couple of months before I bring it in.:D

[Mike Wenzloff]

My two favorites are Imbuia--smells like spices--and East African Camphor--probably because of it smelling like Vic's Vapo-Rub :D

Cedar and Pine are on the list too.

Take care, Mike

[Mike Leone]

I trimed out my basement workshop with sasafress, the smell is heavenly.

[John Branam]

I really like walnut, red oak and cypress. I have built to many things out of MDF lately and really look forward to using real wood again.

[nic obie]

Even though I don't use it much, I enjoy the smell of pine.

I don't like to work with oak. To me it smells like baby poop :eek:

[Nancy Laird]

Flavor? I don't chew it, but to me the very best-smelling flat wood is fresh-cut red oak. I can always tell when LOML has been cutting oak in the shop because of the smell.

I've found a couple of nice-smelling woods in pen blanks, but I can't for the life of me remember what they are called. One of them is a creamy wood with reddish/orange grain streaks through it, and the other is orangy with dark grain. Both smell just yummy.

[Al Willits]

Geeze I hate being a newbie here...haven't had a chance to play with all the woods yet, but I liked the pine I made the flower boxes out of.

I can say I wasn't to impressed of the Basswood I played with, reminded me of being in a swamp...:)

Al

[Alan DuBoff]

Besides wet white oak dust, what do you use to get the stain off your fingers?Kevin,

I haven't had a big problem with it, but worse than my hands are my clothes, my wife is often unhappy when she cleans them...she seperates the clothes something like this...whites, colors, Alan's shop clothes.:D I think that moisture or sweat from your hands have a big part to do with it, and in your case it's most likely sweat on your hands that mix with the dust.

Walnut dust for instance, if I wash my hands and wipe them on my pants (I know, we're not supposed to do that;-) will leave difficult stains with the dust on the clothes, which can cause some strong remarks from my wife at cleaning time.:eek: Even so, if I pick up a glass of ice tea in the shop that has been sitting, it will have sweat on it as the ice melts, and I'll wipe my hand on my clothes also...This is not unique to walnut, even last weekend I was working with hard maple and had a pair of duck bib overalls (brown?) covered with dust, I wouldn't say my wife was thrilled to clean those.:o Just wait until next week, I start blacksmith instructions...will be curious to see her face when my bib overalls come back with coal soot all over them...:rolleyes:

For my hands I use abrasive soap and good 'ol elbow grease, but the bigger problem is when cleaning an old woodworking machine that has been rusted over completely, that makes a huge mess, and the stains will often not come out if gotten on clothes. Even on the hands, soap will often not get it all off...in that case I use an old standby...time...I let it wear off...;) Most clothes I use in the shop can't be worn to work afterwards. (this is a hobby for me)

Walnut can bleed sometimes into a lighter colored wood that is laminated next to it, like maple for instance. I find that hand planes work good in that case, rather than sand paper (I generally prefer hand planes to sand paper, but I resort to sand paper in cases where I can't get a clean shaving with a plane).

I have been working with walnut some, but not as much as I would like, and my love for it goes way back to high school where I carved a bowl on the lathe for my Mom, which she still has to this day. Great stuff to work with. I'm using 8/4 walnut on a bench I'm building, had been planning to laminate 2 pieces of 8/4 together for the ends of the workbench, and dovetail them together. Hopefully hand planes will be the trick for that.

EDIT: I have some air dried walnut that doesn't smell so good when cut, but I still like working with it. I wouldn't say that walnut is my favorite in the sense of how it smells, it's how it works that I admire.

[Frank Pellow]

Hey we are supposed to be talking about taste here, not smell. :D That's why I mentioned spruce (and, more specifically, spruce gum) in my earlier reply. But, most people seem to be thinking smell, in which case by far my favourite is red cedar.

[Frank Fusco]

Frank, your mention of pens reminds me of a pen I made out of Amboyna Burl last year, it was certainly one of the nicest smelling woods to work with, a pleasure. Not very common and pricey, but the smell is ever so wonderful.

Amboyna burl pens also sell well. The smell of money is wonderful also. :rolleyes:

[John Fry]

I trimed out my basement workshop with sasafress, the smell is heavenly.


Yup! sassafrass it is! That sweet root beer smell is superb.

[Lee DeRaud]

Just about any wood tastes good with a little wasabi spread on it. :p

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Mahog is always nice it smells like dirty baby diapers.

[Frank Fusco]

I trimed out my basement workshop with sasafress, the smell is heavenly.

Sasafrass is EARTHY. Bethlehem Olivewood (from the Holy Land), now that is HEAVENLY. :)

[Jerry Strojny]

I would have to say that Walnut is my favorite. Smell, taste, sound it makes...just wish I could afford to use more of it. Right now I'm working on something with Alder. It's ok, not bad, but not that exciting of a taste either. I hope to make a small box for a friend from walnut and maple next...yummy.

[Tyler Howell]

Rose Wood.:D
But it makes me sneeze!

[Corey Hallagan]

I love working walnut the most. For the aroma... cherry is nice, Bethlemem Olive wood is wonderful and Desert Ironwood is the rankest stuff on earth :)

corey

[Steven Peters]

Cherry is definately one of my favorites to work with. I take my scraps and use them to cook on.

[John D Watson]

Upon entering the air terminal in Yangong, Rangoon(Burma) I was hit in the face with what I recognized as one of my favorite smells on earth, but much much stonger. My brain was lost as to what it was at first, but as I scanned the inside of this huge building, I soon realized it was the building itself. Teak, the whole thing was teak. I've never tasted anything like it before.:)

[Alan Turner]

Ash is one of my favorites for smell, and I suppose that taste and smell are pretty closely related. Spanish cedar is awful! I built a series of garden benches of it, and it took months to get rid of the taste/smell. Someone mentioned liking elm, but to me was like a cow pie. Blegg. Zebawood is also high on the list of hates, while I am at it.

[Kevin Jaynes]

I have been cutting alot of red box elder lately. It has a very faint, hard to describe smell to it, but I like it.
What I like most, is the feeling I get everytime i crack one of those logs open. This stuff has incredible coloration and character.

I love the smell of oak too though. And red mulberry. And walnut. And sycamore. And, and, uh, heck I even like the smell of zebrawood! I love it all. :rolleyes: I have an addiction not easily quenched by running just a few logs through the mill. ;)

Doesn't seem to matter what I am cutting I can't wait to get to the next one and see what in their too. :D

[John Kendall]

MMMmmmm... Walnut... I get to smell it when I work with it and then again if the wind is out of the south. I live a little north of Hartzell Hardwoods who is drying walnut in their kilns quite often. It's nice to smell even when I'm not working with it. :o

[Roger Barga]

Imbulia - I have only worked with it as veneer, but it has a wonderful aroma...

[Paul Greathouse]

Haven't had the opportunity to work with any of the true exotics but my favorite seems to be exotic to most you. Being from Louisiana I get to work with alot of Cypress. It has a wonderful strong oily smell. Even most of the older boards I have cut into still have alot of aroma left in them.

I really enjoy working with Oak but the smell doesn't do alot for me. It reminds me too much of when we had a firewood splitting operation going. The wet Oak had an almost pungent smell. Not quite as bad as someone else had said "baby poo" but close.

[Jay Jolliffe]

I had to make some garden gates a few years back & used Port Orford Cedar. It has a perfumey smell & I kinda like it. I haven't found any woods that I don't like the smell of when machining but I haven't used too many of the exotics.

[Ron Blaise]

Hands down!! Cherry is my favorite, even under the laser machines it just plain smells sweet.


Bruce
Nothing smells as sweet as Cherry, Walnut is nutty smelling and Eastern Red Cedar keeps my shop smelling nice too. I just love the smell of fresh cut wood period.

[Bill White]

Did some padauk a while back. Really smells like a spice/herb.
Bill

[David Tiell]

Maple and Cherry

[Matt Calder]

All,
It is difficult to pick a favorite, but the smell of Pau Amerello reminds me of college. But watch out, if any police friends come around while you're cutting it, you might have some explaining to do!

Matt

[David Kauffman]

I always like how working with Catalpa in the shop smells like dried hay from the barn. Bandsaw, table saw, planer... the whole shop smells like hay, brings back good memories if nothing else.

[Robert Mahon]

As far as smell goes, IMO, Imbuia has the most pleasant smell when cutting. Unfortunately, it doesn't last very long or stay with the wood after the cuts are made.

[Mark Singer]

Still Shlamaca after all these years!;)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=shlamaca+wood

http://www.google.com/search?q=shlamaca+&hl=en&lr=&filter=0