Hickory end grain help. It appears to be impenetrable!

[Ron Kellison]

Ugh! I wouldn't use pine unless someone held a gun to my head!

I've gotten too much pine from the Blue and Orange megaliths where it's just so full of resin and not properly dried. Bleeeeck!


I made a generalized statement when I said "we buy our wood for a Borg". I live in eastern Ontario and I'm blessed with the availability of good wood at reasonable prices. The pine I use is typically either old-growth pine or salvaged from old buildings or (sometimes) underwater. The maple and oak are first grade, often from a local sawyer. If I shop carefully, I can get air-dried maple and oak for about the same price as pine. I buy all my wood rough and mill it myself. I still have a small stash of old-growth clear pine that I picked up for less $1bf. Good clear poplar can be had for less than $2bf and flatsawn maple and red oak can be found for ~ $2 - 2.50bf.

There is no comparison between old growth pine and the crap sold by the Borgs! I actually enjoy working with the old stuff!

Ron

[Winton Applegate]

If you stand far enough back from your computer screen you will be able to tell what they are.
ha, ha,

Have I worked hickory ?

Oh yes . . . I am an old hand with hickory.

Ha, ha I'm lying. Here is my entire run with hickory; the handle in this lignum vitae plane adjusting mallet. Note instead of wedging the head end on I wet the end grain and peened it ala the Japanese chisel method of holding the steel rings on. Worked well. Seems like I read that I could do this with a mallet head so I tried it. I heated the handle to super dry it first for a tighter joint then assembled it and wet it for the peening. I enjoyed what little time I spent with the hickory.

Oak easy or hard to work?

I didn't have any problem planing it but I distinctly remember spending a life time or two attempting to rip saw it by hand. That was before I had learned much about sharpening handsaws but it was a brand new handsaw 6 t rip.

Why am I obsessed with working the harder wood ?

Here is the way it went and I have practically given up the hard stuff as it were. See latter part of this post for proof. No . . . honest . . . I have.

I wouldn't say I make furniture out of all that bubinga and purple heart. I made a couple of tables and one of those was a little end table just to experiment before I made our dinning table TOP.


I looked in Nick Engler's book to see what were the really STRONG, not necessarily hard, woods.
I found bubinga. I made a few tools out of it, various saw horses for the most part. I discovered then that is was fascinatingly beautiful.

Then I started to get serious about making a real woodworking bench. Because the bubinga is endangered and because it is hard to come by enough of it where I am to even make a table top let alone a work bench and because of the price, though I don't under stand why people are so adverse to putting some serious money into the main tool in a hand tool wood shop THE BENCH . . .

well I noticed that purple heart is about as strong, stiff, rigid, what have you and is fairly easy to come by in quantity here and is less expensive, a perk, and perhaps less endangered.

I went with purple heart for my bench. It just happened to be extra hard and it just happens to be a bastard to plane without tear out until one gets over that learning curve Adam mentioned.

I am laughing at myself again, ha, ha, ha because I am the opposite of the steep learning curve type and I DO NOT jump in with both feet. I stick a toe in the water, then back off and analyze the water on my toe until I exhaust all possible avenues of investigation. Then I analyze the air between my toes just to be sure I didn't miss anything that might prove interesting before I go back and stick just my foot in the water.

and on an on.

I enjoy the process . . . what can I say.
It is a hobby right ? Why not suck all the _______ (fill in the blank) that I can out of it.

That is one reason I just smile when someone tells me I am an amateur and I don't make my living from woodworking so I couldn't possibly know what I am talking about.

Yah.
Well when the phone is ringing and someone is wanting their furniture and the pro has a few others about to start calling and he has no experience with a process and picks the first one that gets his chestnuts out of the fire but has no time to explore all the other possibilities and permutations.
I say . . .
Yah. Well.
I have.

Anyway end of mini rant.

I have given up the hard stuff for the most part because I don't need those super strong properties in furniture. We liked the way the bubinga looked, that was a surprise that it was so beautiful, I was just looking for strong. We made the dining table out of the bubinga because we fell in love with the look of the stuff. Too endangered to keep hogging it up for everything though. So I am quitting the bubinga.

Look here's proof . . . see . . . walnut . . . nice and friendly like.



I will spend quite a bit of time with this stuff. You would be neander proud of me. These chest sides are all hand resawn, hand thicknessed/planed and even rub joined without clamps ! ! ! That was fun to learn. Amazing how well it works. Seriously cool.

For one project I have laid up some nice friendly primavera, it is all hand resawn from a thick plank and is acclimating under our bed. It's been about five years. Do yah suppose that is enough time?
Ha, ha,
I got to get back to that one soon.

I have some cherry I have not even begun to work for a nice little lamp stand, or work table or, entry table. What ever you want to call it.

Then it will be back to the wood store for some more walnut to make my first spice chest. Now that will be a dream project if I can make one of those ! ! !

So you see . . . I am not really focussed on working the hard stuff much. I just get all up on the soap box about some of the caviler sharpening comments . . .
maybe I shouldn't.
and some of the disparaging remarks about bevel up planes
maybe I shouldn't.

But if some body doesn't argue the other side it is going to get boring if we all agree.

I still say though that if one can sharpen to plane the hard and tearout prone stuff then they can plane anything.
And if one has a plane that will plane the above then that plane can handle about anything else so why dump it for another ?

Who knows, maybe I will (again) get interested in using the planes that "sound like a zipper" when hogging wood off . . .
but don't hold your breath.

[Chris Griggs]

Winton...you with walnut..I never thought I'd see the day

Actually very interesting to see a fuller picture of what you work and also what the history of your relationship with bubinga and purple heart is.

But if some body doesn't argue the other side it is going to get boring if we all agree.

I'll pick up a piece of purple heart next time I get some lumber and will do my darnest to prove you wrong. Though it still won't be that contentious and entertaining for you because I do like bevel up planes a lot. I just presently like BD planes slightly better for the work I do. My LA jack is an awful nice plane to use though, so who knows, maybe some day I'll betray my BD friends shed my chipbreakers and go BU...but I'm not ready to part with my chipbreakers yet.

[Adam Cruea]

I don't think that I would use any wood only because others don't, rather I'd choose woods that are suitable for the project in mind.

Ipe is used by plenty of people by the way. It is a commodity not a rarity. It is a fine choice for outdoor furniture, a poor choice for bragging rights I think. I have attached a photo of a bar that I made for a client. It is constructed of ipe, plywood and stainless steel. It is designed to be moved around and I fabricated the Johnson bar to make it easy to do so.

Ipe is a catch all trade name that actually refers to about 8 different South American species. As you work it in quantity you'll see that there are certainly different "types". It is unpleasant to work in my opinion and it is brutal on tooling.

I never said I only use it because others don't. However, that goes into part of the decision. I had 4 or 5 species to choose from for my bench; I chose hickory. My wife wants outdoor furniture to replace what I made with treated pine; I could go cypress, cedar, almost anything; however, in the part of the US where I am, you don't see much Ipe woods. It's something different. We've also had issues with termites on our property (the yack-arse that sold us the house never disclosed termites had been on the property), so I want something my wife can accidentally put in the yard, forget about, and not have to worry about those little jerks gnawing it to death.

However, for furniture inside the house, my wife wants to use maple, walnut, white oak, birch. . .lots of common woods. I'm okay with it. Give me an opportunity to make something out of super-hard woods, though, and I'll jump at it just for the challenge.

[Winton Applegate]

Purple heart and prove me "wrong".

Ha, ha, that't the stuff !
I will enjoy hearing about and seeing your experience.
Then I too will learn some things.

Purple heart is quite planeable bevel down.

Disclaimer:
The following comments are experiences as they related to me. Your results may vary. Planing purple heart is an inherently dangerous activity and can easily result in serious personal injury or death.
End of disclaimer


For me it takes a back bevel. I now understand that if I set the chip breaker in the sweet spot it won't need a back bevel.
I never found the sweet spot.

I will say that if you try the purple heart that you try more than one plank and get in a stichiation where you have to take off a fair amount of thickness (but not enough to be able to bandsaw it off) over a largish area. For instance taking the wind out of a 8/4 plank.

I say more than one sample, because like most shipments of wood the mineral content and grain varies.
The first attempt I ever made on a little sample that had no figure and was quite bland looking gave me a run for my money and chip, chip, chipped out until I back beveled my LN #4. I wasn't jig sharpening back then, I was sharpening by hand and stropping on leather from Tandy"s. Of coarse I tried it without stropping as well.

I will save you a bunch of time and say that it is quite possible to plane purp with the above LN #4 it just isn't any fun and for a large area where a significant thickness is to be taken off to level it . . . it is positively masochistic. Ad to that an O1 blade and I think I would rather take up another sport . . . say . . . zebra riding.

Ha, ha, I miss Philip the plane maker

http://www.marcouplanes.com/

from Africa taking a break from all the BS there and last I heard was in New Zealand ( I hope you can and have returned to your home my friend). As I recall he is the one who enlightened me about zebra riding.

He said :

Don't.

[Winton Applegate]

Want something Wife can put in yard and not worry about and that termites ignore.

THIS could open up a whole new hobby for you ! ! !
Are you ready to add on a second shop ?
Learn a whole new aspect of sharpening and edge geometry.
Cut stuff as hard as steel ?
If you say yes to even one of these then I think you are ready to explore . . .




http://www.google.com/search?q=steel...w=1171&bih=623


This is me in my real comfort zone. Woodworking is when I want to keep banging my head at something that is outside my comfort zone .




PS: I finally got all the faces worked into one post and , my latest goal, in order.
PPS: and I made the photo too small. Sorry.
PPPS: I am not saying put the king size steel canopy bed I am working on in the yard.
PPPPS: Though you could. If you want to be different. Wife might not go for THAT different.
PPPPPS: Though when I was a kid living with my parents I slept nights outside on the patio all summer because it was too hot in the house.
PPPPPPS: but that's just me.

[William Rhodus]

After many years of working with a variety of domestic hardwoods, I obtained a large quantity of beautiful hickory lumber that resisted my best efforts with back saw, plane, and chisel. This caused me to reevaluate my saw sharpening skills from the perspective of sharpness, kerf width, and rake and made me a much better saw filer. This caused me to reevaluate my abilities to sharpen a plane iron from the perspective of sharpness, iron angle, micro bevels, etc. This caused me to reevaluate my abilities to properly sharpen my chisels from the perspective of sharpness, angle, micro bevels, steel composition, etc. This caused me to evaluate the application of the proper tool to the task from the perspective of plane width, bed angle, total iron angle, etc. In other words, this caused me to improve my skills to a much higher level than they were previously. It wasn't always fun, but it sure improved my game.

[Winton Applegate]

William,

That is a great post there.
ha, ha, I kept waiting for the other shoe to fall until the last though . . . I thought for sure you were going to say . . that reevaluating all those things finally caused you to reevaluate giving up your nice carbide tipped high speed power tools and so you decided to keep using those after all.