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Turning Hickory?

I've only turned 4 pieces from it and 3 cracked while drying one of em opened up like a half inch.Maybe someone else can give you some drying tips. Good luck. Actually they all cracked but one I turned the neck off and saved it.
 
I've turned several (maybe 15-20 or so?) bowls from hickory; shagbark and pignut. Both turned very well, but as Mark mentioned, it seems to be prone to checking. I found after losing a couple to large cracks, that tiny little checks that you missed turn into large, open cracks when drying. I found that turning them quite thin worked well for me---less than 3/8". I still got a few cracks around the tenons which I left on during drying to make sanding easier. The wood I turned was much too wet to sand right away. I made a couple very nice sets of spalted hickory that had amazing color--they are in my gallery. The rest of the tree was just whitish bland hickory colored. This spalting had no soft spots, amazingly! Right now I have a few pecan bowls drying. Now you think hickory is hard, try pecan (a type of hickory, really)....
One last thing I should mention is that it moved a lot during drying. So much that when I thought it was dry and removed the tenons, a couple wobbled a bit after the moisture content in the finished bowl equalized....DOH. I've had the same problem with American Beech. The concave bottoms seemed to reverse themselves........
 
I've turned many pecan (in the hickory family) pieces. When dry, it's a very hard wood, but turns well. Also turns well wet, but the shavings are kind of fibrous & stringy at times. Much of the wood I got from a friend spalted - here's one that started at an about 80 lbs blank.
 

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I am fairly new (51 bowls) I had a shagbark hickory fall down about a month ago because of too muck rain, the root ball came out of the ground and is over 10' tall. At chest height the tree dia. is over 36" I have turned so far 10 bowls from it. The last two I was starting to catch on to how work with hickory. I was having a problem with tool presentation, and I also had to refine my sharpening technique. They are now fun. If the tool is not really sharp the chips are real hot. The results in hickory are great. 1 bowl so far is completely finished in A.O. My hickory has so far a lot of dark brown in the wood, I don't know if that is how all hickory is or not but it is sure beautiful. I am going to turn 2 more this afternoon. Good luck and happy turning.

Dave
 
waltben said:
MichaelMouse:

So why do you think my claim was about turning a hickory family wood was bogus when pecan is a hickory? Don't understand your post at all, especially when you talk about furniture.
Click to expand...

HUH? Seems pretty simple. It's more than the "hickory family," it's a dead ringer.

You need to read, not just react.
 
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