Planing redgum

[gritpipe]

G'day people,

I have some rough sawn redgum boards that I'd like to turn into window and door frames. I reckon the best way to do this is to pay to get the timber machined OR get myself a jointer/ thicknesser, however I'd like to know if any of you would recommend hand planing and if so what type of plane? Really don't want to go down the machine tool road if I can do it by hand.

Regards,

gritpipe

[Twisted Tenon]

Hi Gritpipe
Welcome to the forum :). I don't know your skill levels but if you are new to planeing and need the timber for a job with a deadline I'd definitely have them machined. Of course I'd be buying the thicky and having some fun learning which is what I did:D, but I wasn't making something to a deadline or to a finish.

TT

[jhovel]

Would look great! ... for a few weeks or months. :(
After that, the timber will move like CRAZY. :oo:
I built a benchtop from beautifully grained VERY old redgum. Carefully planed and thicknessed it, stored it for many months in the building it was going in to normalize the moisture content, planed and thicknessed it a smidgeon more to compensate for the very slight warping that I had expected from the move from shed to house. Then joined them with a double row of buiscuit dowels and glued the whole thing up. It looked stunning after sanding and completely sealing it with two pack polyurethane!
After around 6 months, a couple of joints opened slightly - and kept going. When the gaps got to 10mm wide in the middle of the benchtop, I filled the gaps with epoxy, sanded it all again and resealed the entire benchtop again (all round) with more two pack. Six months after that the first cracks started again - in different joints. One of them opened up to 13mm before I repeated the filling - sanding - sealing. One year later, I gave up. The joints have opened in different places again, some have closed again and several of the 'slats' have twisted near the ends.
Never again!!
All our other benchtops were then made from Jarrah flooring :) terriffic after 25 years!

[gritpipe]

Hey TT, thanks for the reply, no rush on this project so hand tools are still an option. Regarding the skill level, I'm a newbie. I'm assuming if I cut the redgum into shorter lengths hand planing might be an option but, I also assume there'll be a bit of physical labour and time involved that'll prevent me from pursuing my other hobbies... Any idea how hard the redgum'll be on the cutters? Cheers

Gritppe

[Luke Maddux]

I can actually back some of this up. In my experience red gum can move a lot.

To do this by hand with any kind of efficiency you'll need a few things:

Square
Straight Edge
Adequate Workbench
Appropriate sharpening media for the planes.

After that, you'll need at least one plane, and up to four.

If it was me, I would use a No. 5 plane with a cambered (curved) cutting edge on the blade to knock off the rough sawn and get it close to flat. Then I would either swap with a straight blade or use a different No. 5 plane to get a truly flat surface. Then, depending on the length of the boards, I would use a No. 7 to ensure it was nice and straight, and also to joint one edge.

At this stage, it gets into some true skill (and that's not to say that the previous steps were simple). You'll need a marking gauge (gotta get one of those) registered against the flat edge to define the desired width of the board, and then you'll need to saw off the majority of the waste with a rip saw (something else to buy and sharpen appropriately), and then plane down to the gauge line. This will give you one flat face and two flat, parallel edges that are 90deg to the flat face.

Then, repeat the marking gauge process using the original, flat face and then flatten the opposing face, bringing it down to the gauge line and, finally, in parallel with the other face. At this stage, the board is Dressed All Round and you can carry on with the project, assuming of course the project only requires one board. Otherwise, repeat this step for every board in the project.

And then, since it's Red Gum, after you've dressed the last board, start all over because the first board would have moved some by then.

So... In other words...

Yes, I would seriously consider machining it. Complete dimensioning of rough sawn timber is hard work, particularly if you aren't experienced or already equipped with the appropriate tools, and particularly if it's Red Gum, which is quite hard, heavy, gummy, and blunting. I once did what you're wanting to do on a Red Gum chest build, only I had a table saw and a thicknesser and I still ended up having to abort the project because the wood moved after initial dimensioning.

That's not to be discouraging. You certainly can make great stuff out of Red Gum, but it pays to work efficiently and account for more movement than usual.

Good luck,
Luke

[markharrison]

Other people have given their opinion. My experience is contrary to theirs, but I was not making big panels with it.

I made two Georgian style bedside tables with Redgum about ten years ago. They're still perfect.

I'm not saying the other guys didn't have these problems, just that my experience has been the diametric opposite.

That all said, I don't think that Red Gum is the best material for the purpose you have chosen. It would look fabulous but it is awfully hard on hand tools, and after all that work, the next owner of the house is just going to paint it anyway!

I would recommend machining it. Preferably with abrasives for flat surfaces.

[gritpipe]

G'day All, and thanks for your replies. I'm hearing you pretty clearly that using a plane, while possible, is probably for masochists. About the redgum not being a particularly stable timber, you're right on the money. There are signs of other redgum parts in the building (from a previous owner), moving around and no longer being true. If anyone knows of a good fee for service wood machining shop in southern Adelaide.... Gritpipe out.

[justonething]

redgum is a siliceous timber and your plane will dull extremely quickly.
I did some planing on redgum stumps a while back and I had a few spare blades so I didn't have keep going to my tormek, and I wasn't removing that much material.
So have a look at your pieces and determine how much cupping, twisting and warping there is and decide how much material you'll need to remove.
I'd use either a #4 or #5, basically because I can buy cheap blades. I have 5 of them, so I keep changing blades as soon as they go blunt. You'll have to either have your sharpening station ready to go or get a few spare ones like me. Be patient and take your time because it will take a long time planing by hand but the end result is quite striking.

[D.W.]

If I'm reading right, that's janka 2160 and mentioned above to have significant silica content. You can work wood like that by hand, by the territory for the hand dimensioner is usally wood in the 500-1500 janka hardness range.

If I had a lot of that to work and I didn't want large stationary power tools, I'd consider getting a hand power planer with carbide blades to do a lot of the work. The only trouble with that is that hand power planers aren't particularly accurate and working the wood the next step after them with a plane can be problematic.

These parts are for windows and door frames only and not for windows and doors, correct? I would at least get a lunch box planer and let it take the beating if there is a significant volume to be done.

[IanW]

Hmm, my sporadic experience with Red-Gum (and I presume you mean River Red Gum, E. camaldulensis) has been varied. On average, it has been much better than Forest Red Gum (E. tereticornis), but still a reasonably tough customer. One lot (which Luke got from somewhere) was actually quite good to work with and planed fairly easily, with little tear-out despite being moderately figured. Every Eucalypt I've come across is siliceous to a greater or lesser degree and so yes, you will certainly need to stop & sharpen often. The Forest Red Gum we used for Luke's bench was about as nasty a wood to hand plane as I think I've ever encountered. We managed it, but I'd be lying if I said it was fun!

Both red-gums have moderately high shrinkage rates:
RRG: Radial: 5.3%, Tangential: 8.8%.
FRG: 8.6% (tangential); 4.8% (radial).

But their main problem is they take forever to equilibrate, partly because of their density and also because they do seem to be slow 'driers', in my experience, even for our hardwoods. I would have some caution in choosing such woods for window & door frames, they are certainly as durable as it gets, but the potential for movement where exposed to weather might be your undoing. Remember, hard, dense woods develop a lot of power when they absorb moisture, & no amount of restraint will stop them moving if they chose to do so.

For applications where movement isn't an issue, or in situations where it is well-protected from the elements, it should give few problems, as long as the wood has properly equilibrated before you start working it, which can take almost forever if the sections are thick. But a bench I made from well-seasoned Sydney Blue-gum about 25 years ago has remained sound and the glue joints in the top of it are still perfect. It has shrinkage values which are substantially higher than either RRG or FRG!

Cheers,

[macg]

Hello gritpipe,

I reckon prior to the 1970's most major towns had decent timber yards,
that had a vast variety of timbers for all the different applications of timber.

There are all different characteristics of timber: density, moisture content, flexibility,
strength, shrinkage rate, and the list goes on.

What I'm getting at is, you need to match the right timber to its application to
achieve satisfactory results.

Red gum may be good for rough work, where movement is not a problem,
like slab furniture, post & rail fencing. But not for window or door frames that
need to be stable to have windows and doors with good opening & closing
weather poof fit without any binding.

Hope this is of help to you.

Regards

Graham.

[planemaker]

Grahams thoughts on Red Gum match my own.

Stewie;

[D.W.]

Presumably this wood isn't available quartered or can't be prepared quartered? Most woods that are very poorly behaved all of the sudden are very tame if sawn properly. Unfortunately, that often means quartered or rift with pith sawn perfectly centered, and that is uncommon these days.

[planemaker]

Presumably this wood isn't available quartered or can't be prepared quartered? Most woods that are very poorly behaved all of the sudden are very tame if sawn properly. Unfortunately, that often means quartered or rift with pith sawn perfectly centered, and that is uncommon these days.

David. Joe's experience using Red Gum exemplifies the difficulties in using this timber, regardless of grain configuration.



Would look great! ... for a few weeks or months. http://d1r5wj36adg1sk.cloudfront.net/images/smilies/frown.gif
After that, the timber will move like CRAZY. http://d1r5wj36adg1sk.cloudfront.net/images/smilies/standard/eek.gif
I built a benchtop from beautifully grained VERY old redgum. Carefully planed and thicknessed it, stored it for many months in the building it was going in to normalize the moisture content, planed and thicknessed it a smidgon more to compensate for the very slight warping that I had expected from the move from shed to house. Then joined them with a double row of dowel plates (lamellos) and glued the whole thing up. It looked stunning after sanding and completely sealing it with two pack polyurethane!
After around 6 months, a couple of joints opened slightly - and kept going. When the gaps got to 10mm wide in the middle of the benchtop, I filled the gaps with epoxy, sanded it all again and resealed the entire benchtop again (all round) with more two pack. Six months after that the first cracks started again - in different joints. One of them opened up to 13mm before I repeated the filling - sanding - sealing. One year later, I gave up. The joints have opened in different places again, some have closed again and several of the 'slats' have twisted near the ends.
Never again!!
All our other benchtops were then made from Jarrah flooring http://d1r5wj36adg1sk.cloudfront.net/images/smilies/smile.gif terriffic after 25 years!



Cheers,
Joe

[gritpipe]

Ladies and Gents,

Thank you all for your knowledgeable replies. As an amateur woodworker there's a lot that I hadn't taken into account. Will stick with indoor applications for this wood and get it machined.

[IanW]

Well, I may be dead wrong, but I suspect Joe's woes were due to either a particularly ornery piece of wood with some pretty wild grain direction, or uneven drying, or a construction method that stressed the joints, or quite possibly, all of the above. River red gums can be very irregular trees, with short boles which rarely grow in the one direction for long, so it's pretty unusual in my experience to find long, straight sections of the stuff, especially as the best of them were logged for railway sleepers & bridge timbers before I was born! Its density also means it's a very slow drier. However, I've used it a few times and not noticed any particular problems with glue joints holding. I would have used mostly a good-quality PVA type glue to join it.

While quarter-sawn wood is considered more 'stable', as DW says, that means the wood will expand & contract symmetrically & is less liable to warp or twist. It doesn't follow that it will make the better joint, and in fact putting two quarter-sawn boards together is actually joining the sides that move the most, since most woods have more movement tangentially than radially (River Red Gum, has 66% more). To maximise your chances of success you join like with like (and ensure the rest of the construction allows for the necessary amount of seasonal movement). Both the absloute & relative rates of tangential & radial shrinkage can have an effect ranging from none if the joins are made with growth-rings mirrored, to maximum if one joining edge is exactly tangential and the other radial to the growth rings. It doesn't matter if both joined pieces move the same amount during the seasonal moisture cycles, but it matters a lot if one side wants to move twice as much or more as the other, as would happen across the join when radial to tangential rates are widely different. Problems are compounded when the wood has not evenly equilibrated before glue-up, and or, the method of construction puts restraints on the wood's movement such that something has to give. In the latter case, it should split along any line of least resistance, not necessarily at the glue joint.

As I said, I had no problems with 50mm and thicker glue joints in a wood of slightly lower density than RRG, but quite a bit higher shrinkage values. If I recall correctly, the pieces were flat-sawn, which means the sides with the lower shrinkage value were opposed in the joins, but they were also quite even & straight-grained, which is not too surprising as E. saligna forms beautiful, huge, staight stems. The pieces in question had also been sitting in a shed for a very long time and were as close to equilibrium MC as they were ever likely to get for the locality. After the bench was made, it got moved to a much more humid locality, but so far, 20 odd years & counting, it has remained sound.

Cheers,

[D.W.]

I agree that proper sawing isn't a solve all. It should eliminate any twist and cupping issues, but wood that is prone to cracking still cracks whether it's twisting or cupping.

Also, I have literally only ever found one sawyer who will saw pith on center and dead quartered, and that's horizon in the US. And every time I talk to them, they mention the incredible amount of waste and loss that it creates.

Most logs that I've seen that are urban or pasture logs have enough twist in them that you couldn't even saw them like that, anyway. If you sawed them directly down their length, the diagonally growing rain would just cancel your efforts (even if it didn't, window sills with cracks would still be problematic).

We don't have redgum here, but it looks pretty when it's freshly sawn from what I can see on youtube.

[IanW]

.....We don't have redgum here, but it looks pretty when it's freshly sawn from what I can see on youtube.

But you do, DW. I quote from Wikipedia: It is one of the most widely planted eucalypts in the world (ca 5,000 km2 (1,900 sq mi) planted) (NAS, 1980a). Plantations occur in Argentina, Arizona, Brazil, Burkina Faso, California, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tanzania, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe.

Must be some somewhere where you can gt your hands on it. I recommend you get a bit and use it as the acid test for all your planes.... :D
Cheers,

[Luke Maddux]

There's definitely quite a bit of it in California. I recently visited the GF's family in the SF Bay Area and was amazed by all of the Eucalypts there. Not sure how many were E. camaldulensis, but I'd guess a fair few.

I wonder how many are actually being milled into timber though. They're considered ornamental from what I could tell from talking to people. Odd, given that they're a devastating invasive...

I know I'll be keeping an eye out for some when I get to Washington though... I've only got enough on my boat to last me one or two small projects.

Cheers,
Luke

[surfdabbler]

Very interesting thoughts here. I have a big slab of RRG in the garage, waiting for an upcoming project. Fortunately, there's not much joinery planned for the RRG, as it will just be used for the sides and top of a hall table. I'll be using something more tool-friendly for the drawers and runners.

Working with RRG for a table-top in the past, we gave up trying planing it smooth. The figured grain was just tearing out, so we ditched the beautifully sharp jointer plane and the scraper, and hit it with a Makita belt sander instead. Much better option.

[Luke Maddux]

Working with RRG for a table-top in the past, we gave up trying planing it smooth. The figured grain was just tearing out, so we ditched the beautifully sharp jointer plane and the scraper, and hit it with a Makita belt sander instead. Much better option.

I think that this, when compared with my experience, highlights that for all its workability shortcomings, it has yet ANOTHER one in that it's highly variable! Although my RRG was very reluctant to be still, I was able to plane/scrape it to a finish fairly easily when going with (and I use the term "with" loosely...) the grain.

Oh, the joys of working with wood...

Cheers,
Luke

[D.W.]

But you do, DW. I quote from Wikipedia: It is one of the most widely planted eucalypts in the world (ca 5,000 km2 (1,900 sq mi) planted) (NAS, 1980a). Plantations occur in Argentina, Arizona, Brazil, Burkina Faso, California, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tanzania, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe.

Must be some somewhere where you can gt your hands on it. I recommend you get a bit and use it as the acid test for all your planes.... :D
Cheers,

I would've never known! We don't see much of anything that grows in the southwest, or even the west (cherry, maple, oak and pine are plentiful here and generally cheap because they are harvested and milled locally). I guess Australia might be similar, that stuff on one coast generally doesn't get trucked to the other.

If I can find a turning billet of it around here, I'll save it and make a plane out of it - then the two cocobolo planes that I've made will have something else to crack and check with.

[justonething]

Slightly off topic, What is the hardest wood in the US?

[D.W.]

Slightly off topic, What is the hardest wood in the US?

Of the things that grow here, probably leadwood (3700 hardness), and there are other ironwoods and some true ebonies, but I'm not aware of any real market for them. You see them once in a while turning up in classifieds as chunks of wood on a pallet.

Hickory/Pecan is the hardest wood that is widely distributed and used commercially. 1900 janka, but does not have good properties for hand tool woodworking, otherwise (and it's ugly).

Osage and locust may be harder, and both are easy to get a hold of, but they're ugly stringy woods, and locust often has deposits in it that cause chainsaws to to spark, and it's really undesirable when it's completely dry and hard. (a quick lookup of osage orange says it's 2700 janka and locust is 1700 - there's something about locust once it's dry that makes it seem a lot worse than that, though - we use it for fence posts and that's about it. Even the bugs and microbes don't like it - it'll last 100 years in the ground as a fence post).

We have too many nice-to-work woods to mess around with those. If it's really really hard, we turn it or burn it.

[IanW]

....If I can find a turning billet of it around here, I'll save it and make a plane out of it - then the two cocobolo planes that I've made will have something else to crack and check with.

Dunno that I'd use RG for plane-making, DW, unless you just want the challenge. It's not as bad as its cousin E. tereticornis in this regard, but it can be a 'gummy' wood, so not likely to slip & slide across your work the way Beech does. However (he quickly adds!) I haven't tried it in that role, and it may well polish with use and be fine. I don't want to be around to hear the bad language when you are chopping out the throat & buttresses, though. I've also read that for reasons not fully understood, the Eucalypts that grow in Californy grow particularly twisted and the sawn wood splits to blazes, so you might struggle to find a billet big enough for anything more than a thumb plane.

Speaking of planes made from hard wood - if you really want to test yourself, try building one from some Bull Oak (Allocasaurina leuhmanii), which is reputedly the hardest wood on earth, though some people have doubts about that. It's possibly just the hardest that has made it into the books. Nevertheless, it's definitely a challenge for any edge tool to manage. I did make a plane from it, just for fun, but I wimped out & used the lamination method. Also, I was 'reviewing' the LV small plane kit, so I needed to get the job done in a reasonably short time: 389666

You can see why it gets called 'oak' even though it's not even distantly related to the true oaks. It's a hefty little brute, and the contact surface is nicely 'slippery'. However, I don't like the 'Norris' style adjuster because of the way it tends to slew the blade if the pivot point for the lateral adjustment is even slightly off centre. For reasons I haven't yet firmly established, but suspect it's to do with where the lever cap thumbscrew bears on the blade assembly, that effect is particularly evident in this plane.... :~

Cheers,

[D.W.]

Dunno that I'd use RG for plane-making, DW, unless you just want the challenge. It's not as bad as its cousin E. tereticornis in this regard, but it can be a 'gummy' wood, so not likely to slip & slide across your work the way Beech does. However (he quickly adds!) I haven't tried it in that role, and it may well polish with use and be fine. I don't want to be around to hear the bad language when you are chopping out the throat & buttresses, though. I've also read that for reasons not fully understood, the Eucalypts that grow in Californy grow particularly twisted and the sawn wood splits to blazes, so you might struggle to find a billet big enough for anything more than a thumb plane.

Speaking of planes made from hard wood - if you really want to test yourself, try building one from some Bull Oak (Allocasaurina leuhmanii), which is reputedly the hardest wood on earth, though some people have doubts about that. It's possibly just the hardest that has made it into the books. Nevertheless, it's definitely a challenge for any edge tool to manage. I did make a plane from it, just for fun, but I wimped out & used the lamination method. Also, I was 'reviewing' the LV small plane kit, so I needed to get the job done in a reasonably short time: 389666

You can see why it gets called 'oak' even though it's not even distantly related to the true oaks. It's a hefty little brute, and the contact surface is nicely 'slippery'. However, I don't like the 'Norris' style adjuster because of the way it tends to slew the blade if the pivot point for the lateral adjustment is even slightly off centre. For reasons I haven't yet firmly established, but suspect it's to do with where the lever cap thumbscrew bears on the blade assembly, that effect is particularly evident in this plane.... :~

Cheers,

So, I see that stuff is listed as over 5000 janka hardness (no clue how much variance there is there). I could probably work it, but finish work on the bed of the plane would be scraping and not paring. However, all of the things that I particularly like - such as carving eyes into a plane and working a nice transition on a handle - those might be a bit difficult on wood of that hardness. Especially carving eyes - that's problematic even on cocobolo.

I've never worked anything harder than kingwood and verawood, those two are plenty hard, and I've never made a mortised plane in anything harder than cocobolo.

[IanW]

So, I see that stuff is listed as over 5000 janka hardness (no clue how much variance there is there)....

A reasonable amount of variation. But perhaps the difference between 'hard" and 'ridiculously hard' is moot! :U

As I said, there are a couple of dry-country woods I've struck that are either harder or just harder to work.


.... However, all of the things that I particularly like - such as carving eyes into a plane and working a nice transition on a handle - those might be a bit difficult on wood of that hardness. Especially carving eyes - that's problematic even on cocobolo....

Yeah, well, you understand why I didn't get too carried away with the little plane above! :;

Actually it's not all doom & gloom. Carving may be a bit challenging, but perhaps not impossible. You can work the stuff pretty easily with rasps. I've made quite a few saw handles from Bull oak. It's one of those woods that finishes easily, you can skip though the grades of paper pretty quickly and soon have a mirror finish on it. And it doesn't gum up paper the way all the Cocobolo I've used does! Here is a group photo of handles of different species of Allocasaurina. From L to R they are Rock oak (A. huegeliana ) Bull oak (A. leuhmanii), Forest She-oak (A. torulosa) and Hairy or flame oak (A. inophloia): 389746

They are all hard, but not hard to work for this particular application, if that makes sense?

Cheers,

[Luke Maddux]

Oddly enough I had a fairly well known and certainly vastly experienced wood carver come over the other night to buy some timber. I had a pile of offcuts from some shop-scale milling I did recently, and I offered her the pick of the lot.

There were four species. Gidgee (Acacia cambagei), Inland Rosewood (A. rhodoxylon), Buloke (mentioned above), and Hairy Oak (Allocasuarina inophloia).

Gidgee and Rosewood are, for all intents and purposes, much the same. Super heavy, dark, drylands acacias with hardnesses in the ~4200 - 4400 range. She wouldn't take them, because she said they don't carve well. Ok, well, full disclosure, she took a piece of the Rosewood because she'd not seen it before and it was green, but based on her experience with Gidgee, she was hesitant to put any kind of valuable chisel to it.

She was happy to take the Hairy Oak. It's relatively "soft" (we're still talking Janka 3000's) on the Allocasuarina spectrum. What really surprised me, however, was her willingness to take the Buloke. She balked at the Gidgee and Rosewood, which have Janka ratings roughly 6-800 lbs less, but gladly took the Buloke with the intention of carving it WITHOUT the use of a mallet (I specifically asked if she planned to use one).

So I guess the point I'm making is - and I'm basing this on someone else's experience, which is probably worth noting - when you get into the super hard woods, it becomes a lot about the nature of the grain. Yes, it's harder to push a 1" steel ball into Buloke, but apparently it's harder to push a gouge through Gidgee. Go figure.

That's all I've got...

Cheers,
Luke

[IanW]

... So I guess the point I'm making is - and I'm basing this on someone else's experience, which is probably worth noting - when you get into the super hard woods, it becomes a lot about the nature of the grain. Yes, it's harder to push a 1" steel ball into Buloke, but apparently it's harder to push a gouge through Gidgee.....

Well, I would have put Gidgee and Bull oak in the same league when it comes to carving but my experience of 'carving' these woods is pretty much restricted to forming the lamb's tongue on saw handles. However, I can vouch that Janka hardness is not the absolute arbiter of how a wood cuts or carves. Acacia pendula, or weeping Myall is a bit less hard than Bull oak (4,400 vs. 5,060), but it's substantially more difficult to cut with any tool I've applied to it! Lovely stuff, but I think I'd rather avoid it, in future..... :U

Cheers,

[D.W.]

A reasonable amount of variation. But perhaps the difference between 'hard" and 'ridiculously hard' is moot! :U

As I said, there are a couple of dry-country woods I've struck that are either harder or just harder to work.



Yeah, well, you understand why I didn't get too carried away with the little plane above! :;

Actually it's not all doom & gloom. Carving may be a bit challenging, but perhaps not impossible. You can work the stuff pretty easily with rasps. I've made quite a few saw handles from Bull oak. It's one of those woods that finishes easily, you can skip though the grades of paper pretty quickly and soon have a mirror finish on it. And it doesn't gum up paper the way all the Cocobolo I've used does! Here is a group photo of handles of different species of Allocasaurina. From L to R they are Rock oak (A. huegeliana ) Bull oak (A. leuhmanii), Forest She-oak (A. torulosa) and Hairy or flame oak (A. inophloia): 389746

They are all hard, but not hard to work for this particular application, if that makes sense?

Cheers,

Makes perfect sense to me. On a much lower scale of hardness, it's like beech and hard maple. they're very close in hardness. If I set up a plane well and allowed someone to plane, chisel and carve them, most people would be surprised they're close.

Same with locust. It's half as hard as the face grain on cocobolo, but I'd much rather work cocobolo, and cocobolo's not always a pearl, either, when it comes to carving nicely.