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hardest wood?

Frank Fusco

Frank Fusco

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12,807
Location
Mountain Home, Arkansas
I have seen this question come up occasionally here and elsewhere. My take on this issue is that it doesn't matter. There are a score of woods from South America that are so hard they make lignum viate look soft. LV is very hard, it is also expensive to obtain and hard to turn. Those other SA specials we will probably never see. The hardest wood that I have ever turned was some seasoned Bradford Pear. It was like scraping granite. Never again for me. I turn a lot of seasoned Osage Orange and like it. While very hard it turns well. Others we might encounter are in the Rosewood family like Desert Ironwood. A chart I was send recently was very specific about moisture content. I ain't fussing with that. All that matters to me is how it performs on the lathe. OO is nice.
 
I think the hardest wood I've turned was some heat-tempered manzanita burl. It had been in a wildfire, and it ate the edge on Thompson bowl gouges like mad. I have five bowl gouges and usually sharpen them all before starting a bowl, and most of the time I can turn the inside and outside of the bowl with no more than one trip back to the sharpener. Shortly before I turned this piece of manzanita, I had done a 16" box elder bowl on a single sharpening. The 6" diameter manzanita piece took 5 or 6 trips back to the grinder to complete, and I only turned the inside and the bottom. (And the wood was still moist after I got through the charred part.) Lots of silica in the wood.
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The hardest piece of wood I have turned is a very dry stick of brown mallee burl. It was nigh impossible to round up with a spindle roughing gouge.; I ended up using my Hunter Hercules for that task.

Hollowing was also quite difficult and I did almost the entire job with the Hunter Viceroy and Stabilizer tools. The small carbide cup cutters cut that hard wood easily.

Before running into that chunk of hardness I would have to say that Lignum vitae is the hardest wood I had turned and I have turned over 500 different species. Some woods are more brittle than hard and they can be difficult to turn regardless of the tool you use.
 
Mike Stafford said:
The hardest piece of wood I have turned is a very dry stick of brown mallee burl. It was nigh impossible to round up with a spindle roughing gouge.; I ended up using my Hunter Hercules for that task.
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Yeah, I forgot about the dry mallee burl I turned into a bowl. That stuff was harder than woodpecker lips. I turned the inner part into a bowl and decided the outer part should retain the natural spikes...for "artistic purposes". :D
 
I like turning the hard woods. I'll turn every piece of Bradford Pear I can get... it a nice close grain wood and makes nice bowls, pepper mills and such. usually don't let it season for long before I turn it, so maybe why I don't find it so hard....the city (if you can call Tellico Plains a city - population about 800) cut a line of Bradfords some years back... they let me pick up all I could carry in the trunk of my car... before I had the F150.... I think most of it's been turned and sold.
Haven't had any Osage Orange in a while, but last time I turned it didn't have any real problems...'course it was still a little green... I had cut it from a huge OO in my stepfather's cow lot.
Haven't had any large manzanita, but the pen blank I did turn some years back was pretty hard.
Haven't turn any Mallee burl in years, and don't remember how it turned...
Only desert ironwood I've turned was a pen blank about 12-15 years ago... was on a par with the Texas ebony I had... both were pretty woods.... don't remember having much trouble with them.

One that I find to be pretty hard is Persimmon.... they use it to make the golf heads for the woods clubs. Nice close grain and polishes up well. There are two persimmons in the lot across the street that I'm waiting for them to die... they are wild persimmons, and appear to be very slow growing... I've been here 17 years and they don't seem to be getting any bigger... they didn't have many persimmons on them this year.

I had a piece of white oak burl that had lain in my shop for well over 10 years while I decided what I wanted to with it... that gave me a nice work out.

Like Vaughn, I usually start out by sharpening all my bowls gouges before I start... then sometime have to make a couple of trips to the grinder. I recently made a set of carbide tools... I use them mostly as finish tools/scrapers.... rarely use to hollow a bowl. I do have an EWT with a swan neck that I'll use inside a hollow form. But I've been very lazy lately, haven't been to the shop but once since turn of the year... just not in the mood, but need to get in mood as my inventory is getting a little low at the museum.
 
The hardest I personally have turned, or tried to turn was black jack oak. Hard to find it around these parts. Certainly harder than osage orange. A friend had one that was storm damaged and asked me if I wanted the wood. Sure, me says. Why not? Back then I had the Stihl 440 mag and 880 mag. Had to put a 25" bar on the 880 for manageability as the tree was only about 18" in diameter. Glad I still had the 880 then. The 440 had a lot of trouble cutting it. It would start into the tree and then just would not get it done. Bogged down all the time. But, the 880 ripped right through it. Brought that danged stuff home wondering if I had made a mistake. I had. Stuff was tough a vulture's butt and very brittle. Not any good for bowls or anything else. Wouldn't hardly even burn. Never again.
 
Persimmon is definitely a hard wood and is in the same family as ebony. I don't find persimmon to be as brittle as ebony.

I am like Chuck in that I start with sharpened tools and make frequent trips to the grinder. My rule of thumb is that if my tool will not engage in the cutting orientation with minimal pressure it is dull. I guess that makes me grind a lot more than most people but keeping the tools sharp saves me sanding time. If you have to force the tool to cut I have found you are more likely to get bruising and tear out; both of which mean more sanding time.

I have only turned a couple of box sized pieces of Texas ebony and I agree it is relatively hard. It is not a true ebony and is a completely different genus.

I once got my hand on some dogwood shuttles from a commercial mill that went out of business. They were ancient and, brothers and sisters, they were hard. Finished up nice and glistened right off the tool if it was sharp.
 
I remember a piece of wood that was even harder. A friend of mine sent me some blanks that he cut from a grapefruit tree. He said they were several years old.

That was as hard as a rock. As Frank said, it was like scraping granite. When I finished it was hardly worth the effort as there was almost no grain and the color was a blasé cream. In general most of the citrus woods are quite hard when dry.
 
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