I turn lots of hard and brittle woods including verawood, lignum vitae, ziricote. cocobolo, blackwood, locust, koa etc. etc. etc. When I am hollowing them I use a Hunter #5 straight and a Hunter #5 swan neck. The carbide cutters love hard brittle woods particularly when you turn them at high RPM. For smaller projects such as birdhouses and hollow globe ornaments I use the #1 Hunter set. That small cutter effortlessly removes wood. With good tool control you can hollow smaller items and leave such a smooth surface that little sanding is needed.

A little over a year ago I had the need for something that would reach deeper for cremain urns than the #5 tools and was directed toward the Jackofsky Hollow-Pro tools. They use a small carbide cutter and with the 5/8" square bar can reach a long way over the rest. The small cutter puts little strain on the entire operation and the only adjustment you have to make is to learn to not depend on the cutting sound while hollowing to know when you are getting thin. The small carbide cutters do not cause the wood to screech as you approach the point where inside diameter equals the outside diameter. I learned this the hard way, more than once.