This is from another thread where John Keeton gave me some advise about types of woods for Finials.
Cherry is not the best wood for finials. Under any stress and it will fracture. I would suggest that you consider Holly, African Blackwood, or even some very hard and straight grained Maple if the other woods are not available to you. Walnut is not great, either, because it is more open grained, but it probably would not break as easily as cherry. Are you completing the finial from the tip back? Once you get the tip turned, you really can not go back to it later, so it is good to completely sand it and get it ready for finish as you go and do that for each section of the finial. You will get the hang of it quickly, I suspect!
Anyway, last night I was thinking about Mountain Laural. I have bunches of it on our property and there is always a supply of dead pieces laying around. Mountain Laural is very slow growing and very hard. I didn't know if it would be brittle so, today I decided to try turning a piece and this is what I came up with. Right below the ball is .040" and the ball is about .130" I've included a side by side with one of my earlier finials. Although I don't think I'll be making any this tiny, it's nice to know that I can. I'll be in great shape as soon as I get some new, stronger reading glasses.
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