Turning Hickory
- Thread starter Wally
- Start date
If you get it within a week of being felled, moderately hard. If you wait longer, you may have to learn to sharpen carbide. I only use Hunter carbides tools, FWIW. They cut.
Pecan is hickory, BTW.
Looks great though.
Pecan is hickory, BTW.
Looks great though.
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Sharp tools.
The harder it is the slicker it finishes.
Cut, don’t scrape.
The harder it is the slicker it finishes.
Cut, don’t scrape.
I recently turned a red oak blank that was laminated about fifty years ago. It was about as hard as any wood that I have ever worked with. Unlike a lot of woods where I could rough out the shape with less than perfectly sharp tools, I was going back to the grinder every fifteen minutes, on the finish cuts, about every seven minutes or so. On the hardness scale, red oak is 1290 and hickory is 1820. When you get above hickory in hardness, you are dealing with a lot of exotic timbers.
Where is Locust on your hardness scale?
Honey Locust is 1548 on the hardness scale of wood.
somewhere on here there is an album of photos from when I turned a bunch of hickory bowls a while back. It is hard wood but not difficult to turn. As Mike points out it finishes very smooth right off the tool. I made it an experiment to go through the entire project, I think 10 bowls, using only a bowl gouge and no sanding. I did a lot of sharpening but that was part of the motivation. Learn to sharpen and use that one tool.
Its gonna be great!Thanks folks! Good info from all! I'll post a pic.... maybe.
Good luck with the hickory. I make windsor chair parts and turnings with maple. At one time I used hickory. Like the above comment about get it while its green. If you let it dry, you won't get a drill to go thru it. I turn between centers or spindle turn so my experience in different.
An example for encouragement. This is pecan but you won't know the difference when turning. The bowl rim is 13.5" peak-to-peak. The foot is 7.5" diameter. Wall thickness is ~3/8". Turned this about 3 years ago.
No finish applied, yet. Sometimes I think why apply a finish.
No finish applied, yet. Sometimes I think why apply a finish.
That had to be some kind of fun cutting in those bowties on the side.
Cutting the bowties wasn't too bad. Kept the piece chucked on the lathe - before making the finish passes with the gouge. Lock the spindle with location at or near TDC. Hot glue a template firmly and securely to the bowl at the location where the bowtie goes. Be generous with the hot glue. Route out the mortise. Remove the template and cut the bowtie from the wood of choice. Clean up the mortise with a chisel being careful to keep everything 'square'. Slap some epoxy into the recess and place the bowtie. Clean up the squeeze out. If you use a contrasting color epoxy it sets off the bowtie. If you put painters tape around the mortise before gluing in the mortise, it makes the clean-up a bit easier, OBTW. Grind/sand down the bowtie flush with the bowl surface and finish turning the bowl. Light passes across the bowties.
Let me emphasize the template muse be attached securely to bowl - again, lots of hot glue. I recommend a professional grade hot glue gun also.
This is the beginning of the great hickory bowl experiment. I saw the log laying in the curb a few days in a row and decided to grab it. This is probably the largest bowl I got out of it and the first. And I honestly don’t recall why I had all that in the kitchen!
Awesome! Thanks for the detail!
Very nice! Thanks.
