Working with wenge

[M_Chavez]

Hi All,

I would be grateful for some advice.

I have recently purchased some 20 year old wenge boards at a very attractive price. That was before I've read that wenge is, apparently, one of the worst woods to work with.
The splinter issue is easily solved: after removing ~30 micro splinters just from carrying the boards in and out of my car, I now always wear nitrile gloves when handling it and it seems to work. Initial resawing also seems to have gone well and the bandsaw blade is still going strong.
My main concern is planing the wood. I have read everything between "planes very well" to "you'll need to re-grind your soles after the wenge project". What was your experience planing wenge and what tips do you have for it?

The plan is to build a few guitar bodies out of these boards, so there will be a lot of hand planing and light passes seem to work a lot better than digging deep.
Is this likely to destroy my good planes and is this a job for an old beaten up stanley?

Thanks.

 

[Ttrees]

Learn to set the cap iron so it has influence
You obviously haven't done so yet because your asking the question.
If you have more than a hairs camber, you wont be able to set it close enough.
The mouth must be open, the cap iron honed at a steep bevel.
Thats it

Good on you for getting ahold of some wenge

Tom

 

[Droogs]

You could try using a york pitch or toothing plane if it's really difficult

 

[Ttrees]

You can take a heavier cut with less effort with the cap iron setting
and you have a Bailey style planes allready, you would not be needing an another frog that you wouldn't use.
A scrub plane removes half the material that a regular iron could do
Bit pointless really, to have to plane the same thing twice and then have to scrape it afterwards

 

[custard]

I've read that wenge is, apparently, one of the worst woods to work with.
I have read everything between "planes very well" to "you'll need to re-grind your soles after the wenge project".

Where do you read this stuff?

I've used plenty of Wenge, okay it's a fairly hard tropical timber, but in practise it's not all that different to working Oak.

Ignore all the internet tosh about certain timbers having supernatural properties, for the most part it's people trying to excuse their incompetence or sensationalising to make a story. Yes, some timbers are trickier than others, but Wenge doesn't present any particular difficulties.

 

[stuartpaul]

I agree completely with Custard. Don't use masses of the stuff and mainly for inlay and edging and apart from the fact that it seems to splinter easily (like some oak) I find it finishes nicely with sharp blades.

Never noticed anything like abnormal wear on tools etc.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

A scrub plane removes half the material that a regular iron could do

Really?

 

[Geoff_S]

When Custard asked "Where do you read this stuff?"

wenge-t30694.html

It's all so confusing :shock:

 

[custard]

When Custard asked "Where do you read this stuff?"

wenge-t30694.html

It's all so confusing :shock:

It's bored retirees and armchair craftsmen getting worked up about nothing. You need a mental filter to separate this nonsense out. Evil splinters and LN irons chipping on the very first pass, I mean, get real!

First rule of the internet...photographs or it never happened.

I'm tied up at the moment but tomorrow I'll dig out a board of Wenge, plane it up with a bog standard Record, and post the photos to show that it's really no big deal.

 

[RobinBHM]

Its quite splintery, but ok.

I did a load of door linings with a few years back -architect specified 200 x 30 solid wenge......

 

[Ttrees]

A scrub plane

Really?

Bit late last night
meant to say, a toothed plane iron removes half the material that a regular iron could do
:lol:

 

[M_Chavez]

Thanks, gents.

I don't have any problems planing it, so chipbreaker is set up well - was just a bit worried about this stuff having the reputation of kryptonite.

What's the current position on taking items made from wenge out of the UK and the EU?

 

[custard]

What's the current position on taking items made from wenge out of the UK and the EU?

Okay, it's not CITES listed. However I've heard Wenge is under consideration for listing and there's no doubt that the quality of the boards on sale has dropped noticeably over the past few years. It's a shame, there isn't really any substitute for Wenge, it's pretty much unique.

 

[Droogs]

the OP doesn't appear to be on piecework so taking a bit longer doesn't matter and it was suggested as a cure for it having difficult grain as a cause of it being hard to plane.

 

[custard]

Here's a board of Wenge and a Record bench plane with it's bog standard iron.

And here's the plane happily working the Wenge

So the talk about Wenge chipping Lie Nielsen irons, and that you'll need to re-flatten the plane's sole afterwards, well it's just sensationalist B/S.

Wenge is a little bit more difficult than Oak to work, but its no big deal and it certainly doesn't warrant all the hysterical bleating.

 

[Racers]

Looks more like a nice laminated iron in a 5 1/2 Stayset to me.

:wink:

But +1 on normal plane and blade for Wenge.

Pete