Craftsmanship in Wood

I set the bevel as it came from the smith, but then added a minor microbevel to bring it up to 28 degrees, so maybe I will knock that back to 27 degrees. The original bevel seemed pretty spot on 25 degrees.

Bubinga and lignum vitae are certainly impressive, but I've always found it amazing that you were able to plane wenge, you certainly are a glutton for punishment, lol. Wenge to me....is if I were to apply an oak like wood grain to cast iron.....then attempt to plane it.

I venture as far as macassar and gaboon ebony, both of which i find work easily but tearout like crazy, it seems to be a common trait amongst very hard woods.

I find ebony fairly compliant for planing, but a bear to hand saw.

backed it down to 26 and that solved the chattering problem in milder hardwoods, no interest in trying it in rock maple yet, hah. So I will leave this one be and use it for softwoods/mild hardwoods, then get something more suitable for rock maple and harder.

Funny that one of my original reasons for taking this path was so that I could take full width passes on my frame (art frame) material.....sigh.

I think ebony is fairly hard on the saws. You must feel like you're practically cutting softwoods when you return from the woods that you normally use to domestic hardwoods.

It's been a while since I worked domestic hardwoods, which is a shame as I like Black Cherry and Black Walnut - who wouldn't?

It took me forever to come around to cherry, being in NJ the land of god awful fake 'cherry wood' interiors. In it's natural state its really wonderful and works beautifully, so its found a place with me.

There's a monstrous Black Cherry in a forest near here, which grew up in a pine forest, so it is rather tall and has a branch-free truck for at least 75 feet. It's about 30" at the butt, and the bark looks quite different than a younger cherry tree.

Nice, that would make for a project or two

How long does it take for the bark to change? I know from Bonsai that pines get their mature bark right around 50 years or so.

I have no idea about how long it takes to obtain the 'old growth' bark. I'm not sure how old the tree is, but I'm guessing at least 100 years.

I saw a Cherry tree in Japan, in Fukushima Prefecture, on its 1000-year anniversary. It was sprawling and decrepit, but still going..

Incredible that they can live that long. So many conifers seem to last for thousand(s) of years, but it seems pretty rare for deciduous.

I know, I was surprised when I heard about it and shocked when I saw it.

Here it is:
Here's an English page on the tree:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miharu_Takizakura