snakewood for peppermill

[Gregg Feldstone]

Any one know of any reason I should not use snakewood for a pepper mill or salt grinder?

[robert hainstock]

The one piece of snakewood that I held in my hand seemed extremely dense, Very like Ebony. Ebony has a bad history of cracking. I cannot say that snakewood will crack, the denser heavier woods seem to do this more readily. It wpould make a splended mill if it does'nt crack. beautiful stuff. Leopard wood could do the job, It's not nearly as dense. :):)
Bob

[Joe D'Attilio]

Brittle woods like PI and any of the other really hard woods, I'll usually drill them just a hair oversized and then use thick CA. I know others will use either epoxy or even Gorilla glue. Seems a bit of overkill to me. The thick CA works just fine. Try to be careful with the sanding process as well. You need to avoid creating heat in the wood as much as possible. Seems that if you produce too much heat you can set up a process that will cause the blank to set up stresses within the wood. As those stresses bounce back and force it gets to a point where something has to give. Since the tube cannot give, the wood is the loser. Snake wood is very bad about it. Hope this helps some.

Seems Snakewood is as bad if not worse than Ebony

[Andrew Derhammer]

It will crack almost everytime you try! Not to mention it's crazy expensive!

[Geoff Hanha]

If you want to spend the money then use it, there is nothing wrong with snakewood or ebony or any other dense woods, as long as you understand how to use them, if you are useing snake wood it would be advisable to use a thin cyno (superglue) on it, or a cellulose sanding sealer to keep it sealed as you work on it, to help from cracking, and keep your tools sharp to keep tooling marks down and lathe revs low when sanding keep the heat down to help with stresses from sanding.

The quote from Joe D'Attilio refers from making pens. if you drill a pen blank it is best to leave the blank to cool from the drilling and even to redrill after, a lot of woods will have stresses from drilling then glue the brass in and sometime latter you find a crack because the blank has moved cooled shrinks and can not because of the brass barrel so it cracks. I drill pre drill my pen blanks then just redrill when about to use, takes no time and i have never had a split or crack from any wood i have used. that goes for blackwood ebony pink ivory and i have gone through a lot of exotics over time. Geoff

[curtis rosche]

i wouldnt use it just because of the price, i dont know many people who would be willing to pay for something that exspencive

[Gary Herrmann]

Snakewood dust can cause respiratory distress and central nervous system problems. Should it even be used for anything food related?

[Reed Gray]

Check out www.pepper-passion.com. He uses everything from that 50,000 year old bog wood to Snakewood, and has excellent pepper also. I get some pepper at just about every show I do with him.
robo hippy

[Clara Koss]

Snakewood dust can cause respiratory distress and central nervous system problems. Should it even be used for anything food related?

that's good information...makes sense to use it for something other than food... something that would not be handled too much...:eek: