Trevanion
Greatest Of All Time
I've seen a couple of topics lately asking "What are the easiest woods to work with?" which left me with the thought of "What are the most difficult woods to work with?". I'm curious to what people here would say as there's quite a diversity of hobbies on this forum that use a variety of different woods.
Of timbers I work with on a regular basis I would have to say Accoya (Radiata Pine) is possibly the worst I have to work with. It machines pretty well and it's a stable timber but other than that it's pretty terrible to use. It's very soft and it'll mark very easy and it doesn't take much to chip a large chunk off the timber if you bump it against something, it's a very coarse fast grown timber so occasionally you'll have pieces with 1 growth ring every half inch, which makes sanding it a nightmare as the large soft areas sand away much faster then the thin hard spots so when you go to paint it, it will look all wavy after paint. The process the timber undergoes makes the timber much darker on the surface with sticker marks from when it was stacked along the timber and lasts until about 6mm into the timber, which means if you want a stained Accoya door you have to buy larger stock to plane it down a lot to get clean grain without black stains. Working it with hand tools is an absolute nightmare, even with shaving sharp chisels it is very difficult to get a clean end grain cut without pulling chunks of timber out, hand planing the surface is a pain as well as it can be quite interlocked despite there being practically no grain to speak of. I think it must be one of the worst timbers for being dusty, even with decent extraction it produces a lot of dust when sanding and machining. The shavings and dust also seem to generate a lot more static than regular timber, I've noticed when hand planing it the shavings will statically stick to you and when doing anything that creates shavings like morticing the shavings will stick to the bit. I've also felt quite a bit a static coming from the timber itself as it's being power fed through machines, the friction between the bed and the timber seems to generate quite a bit of static, which is strange.
Of timbers I've only used sparingly, I think perhaps Mopane was the worst. It's absolutely hard as nails, it doesn't machine well at all and doesn't work by hand at all. I may as well have been working with stone. Definitely wouldn't use it again for anything.
Of timbers I work with on a regular basis I would have to say Accoya (Radiata Pine) is possibly the worst I have to work with. It machines pretty well and it's a stable timber but other than that it's pretty terrible to use. It's very soft and it'll mark very easy and it doesn't take much to chip a large chunk off the timber if you bump it against something, it's a very coarse fast grown timber so occasionally you'll have pieces with 1 growth ring every half inch, which makes sanding it a nightmare as the large soft areas sand away much faster then the thin hard spots so when you go to paint it, it will look all wavy after paint. The process the timber undergoes makes the timber much darker on the surface with sticker marks from when it was stacked along the timber and lasts until about 6mm into the timber, which means if you want a stained Accoya door you have to buy larger stock to plane it down a lot to get clean grain without black stains. Working it with hand tools is an absolute nightmare, even with shaving sharp chisels it is very difficult to get a clean end grain cut without pulling chunks of timber out, hand planing the surface is a pain as well as it can be quite interlocked despite there being practically no grain to speak of. I think it must be one of the worst timbers for being dusty, even with decent extraction it produces a lot of dust when sanding and machining. The shavings and dust also seem to generate a lot more static than regular timber, I've noticed when hand planing it the shavings will statically stick to you and when doing anything that creates shavings like morticing the shavings will stick to the bit. I've also felt quite a bit a static coming from the timber itself as it's being power fed through machines, the friction between the bed and the timber seems to generate quite a bit of static, which is strange.
Of timbers I've only used sparingly, I think perhaps Mopane was the worst. It's absolutely hard as nails, it doesn't machine well at all and doesn't work by hand at all. I may as well have been working with stone. Definitely wouldn't use it again for anything.
Jarrah wood.
