Teak vs Jatoba For Wear and Tear on Tool
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I have used Jatoba for all of my living room furniture and while there have been a lot of complaints working with Jatoba my only real complaint is the weight causing back aches and I found jatoba fairly easy to work with. I have never worked with teak but I may do a project with it so I am looking for some comparisons. Is teak harder on blades and bits than the jatoba? I have read comments in the past about how hard teak is on tools so I am just looking for some comparisons if anyone has worked with both.
Thanks Charlie
Replies
Hey,
I have worked with both, and recently.
While Jatoba is much harder than teak, the teak will be harder on some of your tools. Mainly things like jointers, planers, and hand planes.
The jatoba will knock the points right off of a good carbide saw blade, but teak will pound over a set of HSS planer blades immediately. It's not funny! I don't plane it. I just resaw it and hand plane it.
Teak is soft and forgiving to work with though. It is the easiest wood I have ever used when cutting mortise and tenon joints. A real pleasure. And you can chop a square hole in it with ease for ebony tenon pegs.
The problem is that it has silica in it. Think of this as sand in the wood. Carbide blades are a must, and even they will take a beating.
Hal
http://www.rivercitywoodworks.com
I haven't used teak a lot, maybe 20 bf, but I used it on every machine in the shop. I found it nice to work with. I've heard about the silica issue, but didn't mill enough to find it an issue. It is a very beautiful wood.
Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
As Hal says, it is the silica in Teak which kills tool edges.
For me there is no contest between Burmese Teak and Jatoba-Teak is one of the finest timbers in the world and if you can get some at a reasonable price you are lucky.Teak is not as hard or heavy as Jatoba, and smells superb. If you have coped with Jatoba then you will be more than happy with Teak.
And when you become addicted to woods with high silica content you can get onto Makore, just so as to get things into perspective.
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