Working with kauri wood

[Jdubfudge]

I'm having some issues with some kauri wood I have. I bought a board and cut down the blanks which have been sitting in my garage in Hawaii for about 3 months now. The blanks feel awfully dry and when I drilled them out on my lathe I had two split on me. Then when I finally got a blank to drill, it blew off the lathe.

While I'm fairly new to wood working, Ihve turned some nice pens and I'm not new to wood working in general. I already know my tool was a little dull but it didn't affect the koa pens I made tonight. When I was working the blank, I notice some substantial heat transferring to my tool. Almost too hot to the touch. But again, I had no issues with the koa.

So my question is kauri wood just a pain to work with? Do people stabilize it before working with it? While I like the novelty of the claimed age, to me the bang might not be worth it, when I typically work with koa or other Hawaiian woods that I feel are prettier.

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[Skie_M]

Ancient Kauri is supposed to have the same chatoyance (or very similar) to Koa ... I've found that my Koa looks a good bit nicer than the Kauri that I have access to.

It may be that your Kauri was kiln dried to the point of dessication, rather than air dried to around 8 - 12% moisture content. You may wish to spritz a blank or two with water and seal it in a ziplock bag for a day or two ... and then leave it on a shelf in the shed for a week before you mess with it again, to allow it to normalize.

If you want to see what kind of chatoyance your blank has before you turn it, spray it with some mineral spirits.

Also .... sharpen those tools! You and your blanks will be MUCH happier with sharp tools. Your lathe also doesn't have to work so hard against a sharp cutting edge.


You CAN stabilize it ... and you can also use a wood hardener, which I think you can get locally from a big box store ... Minwax brand, most likely.

 

[Glenn McCullough]

kauri

I understand your plight. The kauri I turned was, too very dry, seemed brittle. I turned it proud of the final size and sanded the rest, taking no chances. I had the same experience with ancient Irish bog blanks. Just finished one yesterday without issue. It sands nearly as fast as turning. Good luck.

 

[Marmotjr]

Dull tools cause accidents and injuries. No excuse to use dull tools.

Dull tools don't turn as well, and will ruin your surface finish, and just add more sanding work to do.

 

[Skie_M]

Also ... Kauri seems to turn similarly to other very light woods, in my opinion ... quite stringy as you work it lengthwise in a spindle turning, very much like turning pine, redwood sequoia, walnut, and redwood cedar (the common cheap stuff used for fencing supplies). The fibers just seem to not want to break ... dull tools will exacerbate this issue. A good sharp scraper provides the best cutting finish I've seen, in these woods.

 

[farmer]

Wood

Buy a metal lathe
Mount a live cutter on the tool post ,,,, end of problem ...................
Everything cuts like a hot knife through butter .