Need durable hardwood that is workable with hand tools

[linke combs]

I am working on a my workbench and will be incorporating a wagon vise. I need to produce a couple of sliding track pieces with a full length groove plowed in them. These need to be made from a strong, straight grained hardwood. Suggestions? I know I can use maple, but I am thinking of something more exotic like bloodwood or even purpleheart. I just do not know how easy it is to work purpleheart by hand...since St. Roy says it is actually a form of metal.

Thanks in advance,

linke

[Lloyd Robins]

Purpleheart is very hard and very splintery. I have used it for furniture accents, and sorry, I will try very hard to not use it again. If you do decided to make purpleheart your wood of choice, as it would probably work fine for your purpose, wear gloves when handling and pre-scoring even with the grain before making your groove might be a good idea. Just my thoughts.

[Klaus Kretschmar]

The best choice probably Lignum vitae would be. It's the by far hardest wood and it has very good sliding characteristics because of the wood own oils. That's the reason why this wood is used for the soles of premium woodies and why it was used for slide bearings in former times.

Another good choice would be Boxwood. Very hard and durable and relatively easy to work with. Bubinga will do this job as well.

Klaus

[Brian Kent]

I have worked with purpleheart - including on my bench - and I love the results. It is hard to smooth by plane unless you use something like the mujingfang high angle smoother. Then I go to bed after needling out the splinters I can see and throughout the night I chew off my fingers one at a time trying to get the broken-off fibers out of my skin.

[Chris Griggs]

I would just use white oak.

[Charlie Stanford]

I would just use white oak.

Without a doubt a great choice.

[David Weaver]

Either design it with something that can be adjusted and replaced like white oak or use persimmon.

[Jim Matthews]

Do you have access to Lyptus in your lumberyard?

It's pretty heavy stuff, and straight grained.
http://www.woodworkerssource.com/Lyptus.html

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Not quite imagining the pieces you're making, but another option might be plastic like UHMW or metal. Just throwing it out there.

When two pieces are rubbing against each other, I try and make the more easily-replaceable piece the one that will wear the most.

[Don Orr]

What about Teak? Hard, durable, workable and also self-lubricating.

[Zach Dillinger]

I would just use white oak.

Seconded...

Without a doubt a great choice.

Or thirded...

[linke combs]

I had not considered white oak or lignum vitae or even boxwood.

Purpleheart and bubinga are in the wood pile. I will have to see what is available locally for those three choices.

[David Weaver]

Check if they have persimmon. I'd never use purpleheart for that. Actually, there's very little I'd use purpleheart for. Or zebrawood, or wenge or black palm or any of those other woods that are fairly inexpensive "exotics" that don't work that don't have nice structure relative to something like verawood, boxwood, beech, white oak, ....

[Jeff Heath]

I fourth, fifth, or.....whatever number it's up to!

White Oak has the perfect working properties for what you are trying to do. Dye it purple if you want it purple.....with some transtint or something.

Jeff

[David Keller NC]

Linke - A couple of considerations. Yes, boxwood or lignum vitae (the real stuff, not that awful green substitute) are probably the premeir woods for wooden parts that will see wear - they've been used for this purpose since the mid 18th century.

However, both are very, very expensive these days, and boxwood isn't usually available in any significant size. So if you're making a longish part and/or you'll have to go out an buy a piece of boxwood or true lignum vitae, you're probably going to spend a lot of extra money for not a lot of extra benefit in terms of wear. I kid you not on the expense of boxwood - Turkish boxwood from Octopus, Inc clocks out at around $180 USD a board foot, which is nearly double what Gaboon ebony costs.

And Roy is correct - purpleheart is just a form of metal that the Forest gods disguised as a purple wood specifically designed to frustrate woodworkers, damage their tools, and inject nearly unremovable splinters under their skin.


There are, however, some solutions that are relatively inexpensive and wear much better than almost any domestic species. One of them is Bloodwood. Despite being ultra hard, Bloodwood planes, saws and chisels very, very well so long as your tools are sharp and you take small bites. I'd highly recommend it, and the cost is typically about $6-$8 a board foot on the East Coast. When finished, it's also really beautiful, and unlike other colored tropical woods, the color won't fade with exposure to UV (sunlight or fluorescent light).

Also, be cautious when interpreting wear characteristics solely on the basis of published hardness tables for different species. Gabon ebony is very hard, and can be brittle when kiln dried. But it works beautifully with hand tools as long as they're sharp and small bites are taken. But in my experience, it doesn't hold up all that well in wear applications. I've used it as boxing in molding planes, as a screw thread box and as a wear compensator in a wooden miter plane. It was a joy to cut and fit to those applications, but I found that I was replacing the ebony portion of those tools pretty quickly.

In contrast, most of the rosewoods, especially cocobolo are about as hard and about as much fun to work with hand tools as granite. And despite being so hard and difficult to work, parts made of cocobolo wear pretty darn quickly. And good coco is now about $50 a b.f. to boot.

Bubinga seems to wear pretty well, is reasonably cheap, and isn't a true rosewood. So if you have some, I'd go ahead and use it.

Finally, persimmon is pretty nice wood to work (it is the only true North American ebony species), but it can be difficult to find.