Anyone work with pecan wood?

[Robert Mayer]

I found a local source for this stuff and was wondering if its any good. I searched google and woodnet and really didnt find some good pictures or info about it.

What does it look like? Is it easy to machine? Is it stable?

[Doug Jenkins]

Some places sell it as hickory. Usually runs from a cream color to cream with brown streaks.
VERY hard and dense. Make sure your tools are sharp.

[rob mason]

I've never used it, but we have tons of them down here in South MS.

Pecan is part of the hickory family. Hickory is notoriously hard, so I would suppose that pecan is as well.

[Mike Wilkins]

Hard and splintery. Make sure to use sharp tools working with the grain. Routing the material is tricky; wants to tear out on the edges if the grain is not straight. Old-timers used hand tools such as spokeshaves to cut chair parts.
And it is heavy.

[Richard M. Wolfe]

I just finished making a bookcase from pecan (five shelves with the bottom half enclosed with solid doors). Then yesterday I cut out the (rough) parts for three mortised and pegged benches.

Pecan is a hickory and shares characteristics with it. The wood can be very variable. It is usually brown with red tones with darker streaks and is "pecky" and the wood darkens with age. The wood is prone to warping when drying and must be stuck closely with lots of weight on top. It's a fairly open grained wood but does finish well and with the color it usually has doesn't call for staining. As hard as it is (and to me it seems to get harder the longer it sits) it calls for sharp carbide cutters; there may be a little bit of chipping but not bad.

[Wade Lippman]

I am currently in the middle of a large hickory project.
It is extremely hard and splintery; though it cuts and drills nicely. You have to make several shallow passes when routing.
And heavy.

It is extremely unstable though. Although well acclimated, everything warped. The end result is beautiful, but it has been a lot of work accommodating the movement.

I will not use hickory again, unless I need something to be really tough. This project is a Torah Ark/table that gets move repeatedly and would get beat up; so hickory is a good choice, but if I had it to do again I am not sure I would use it.

The heartwood/sapwood contrast is striking if you use it properly.

[John Thompson]

I have a cousin who develops land and is also a WW. He had to clear a 100 acre pecan grove about 3-4 years ago and he took the pecan to the sawmill and then rented a building to air dry for two years. He had about 8000 linear feet and brought me 4000 to rip and surface for him. I got 1000 linear feet for my service. I sold quite a bit and used some.

It's hickory but much better looking finished IMO. I love to work with it as I keep the characteristics mentioned here in mind when I do. I am fortunate in that I get to surface another 2000 linear feet in the next several weeks. He still has around 4000 ft. not surfaced and wants 2000 on this shot. So... maybe the new coffee table will be pecan?

Good luck...

Sarge..

[Dan Gill]

I use it in my cutting boards and occasionally for other purposes. Lately, I've been seeing a lot of reversing grain in what I have been buying, which makes planing difficult. As others have said, it is very hard.

[John Eaton]

I've got a couple of spalted pecan turning blanks - they look interesting but I haven't worked with any yet. Hey sarge if you want to swap out some walnut for pecan let me know.

-- John

[Bill Keppel]

Had hardwood floors of Pecan (is that pronounced Pea CAN or pa kan? ...guess it depends on where your from...lol) in my previous home. Nice stuff.

[Mike Henderson]

Had hardwood floors of Pecan (is that pronounced Pea CAN or pa kan? ...guess it depends on where your from...lol) in my previous home. Nice stuff.
I'm from Louisiana. We pronounce it "pa kan" When the Yankees would come down to New Orleans and ask for "pea can", we'd direct them to the rest room.

Mike

[Richard M. Wolfe]

You say....and I say -

Interesting to see the pronunciation of the word, since I work with it a lot. If I had never heard the word pronounced and saw pecan in print, I'd pronounce it "puh-can". Which, as far as I know, no one does.

I've always heard, and say "puh-kahn". I have spent some amount of time in Georgia and heard about half and half "puh-kahn" and "pea-kahn". The husband of the girl I used to share an office with is from Virginia and will give you a look that says, just try correcting me, when he says "pea-can", the way he grew up saying it. There isn't any of "that particular species" in New England but I have a good friend in Massachusetts who ran a sawmill for a good while and dealt with a lot of wood and how did he say it? - "puh-kahn" - just like me. Oh well, maybe he knew how I would say it and humored me but I was curious to see how he would say it and spelled out the word and asked him. I'm pretty sure I never said it to him before I asked.

So much for that tree....now on to bois d'arc. :D

[Louis Rucci]

This is a very informative thread. I just saw an ad in Craig's list that someone has a pecan tree he wants cut down. Any pointers on how to go about it, as I'm interested, but don't know if I can wait a few years for it to dry.

[Richard M. Wolfe]

Louis, we have cut quite a bit of pecan and have air dried it. Here (pretty much the middle of Texas) it air dries to 'usable' in 6-8 months. In Florida I'd guess air drying would take possible twice as long with your humidity. I'd probably go for kiln drying in a climate like yours. Other than that, being specific to the species, pecan is bad about warping when it dries. If you are going to air dry it use stickers about every foot and plenty of weight on top. As I've said more than once, park your car on top of the stack. I'd Anchorseal the ends of the log before it's sawed, but we've not had any particular problems with end checking. And any boards cut thicker than an inch are, like oak, going to look for an excuse to crack. :mad:

If the tree is a yard tree beware. We cut a large live oak today (about a 3' tree) and cut two inch planks from it. It was next to an old house. The area of the trunk about waist high probably had fifteen nails in it. After hearing the dreaded screech on two saw blades (regardless of using the metal detector) the bottom three feet got chainsawed off. :mad: Plus that with that much metal in it that oak wood on the bottom half was an interesting color, to say the least.

Good luck with your "pea-kahn". :D