Hardest Wood to Split

[Tom lad]

Hi all ,first post ? .

Lignum  is also used for bases \ bottom half of some fishing stick floats , it's heavy , I think it sinks .

As said  also for bearings ...

Anyone messed with ' moss stocks ' , ithink a local name , black wood dug out of mossland , pressumably bog oak , should be processed wen wet staight as dug , if it drys ..........

[Billhook]

Just discovered the Janka scale which reveals some surprising facts about different woods.  It measures the strength in terms of the force needed to break a certain size of timber in special press.  Australian Buloke is top of the list at 5000 ft lbs and Balsa at the bottom with some bits as low as 22 ft lbs

 

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

 

Hornbeam has a  Janka     of    1630 ft lbs and a crushing strength of 7320 lbs/sq inch

English Oak                                   1120                                                          6720

Apple                                              1730                                                          6030

Beech                                              1450                                                         8270

Elm                                                     810                                                         4740

Ash                                                  1480                                                          7400

Holm Oak                                        1610                                                          no data

 

[Stere]

Lignum Vitae endangerd species in wild apparently?

[Billhook]

2 hours ago, Stere said:

Lignum Vitae endangerd species in wild apparently?

Mmmmmm forgot that one

 

Janka 4390 ft lbs and crushing strength 12,200 lbs/sq inch

 

Not tackling that one with my X27!

[se7enthdevil]

13 hours ago, Billhook said:

Just discovered the Janka scale which reveals some surprising facts about different woods.  It measures the strength in terms of the force needed to break a certain size of timber in special press.  Australian Buloke is top of the list at 5000 ft lbs and Balsa at the bottom with some bits as low as 22 ft lbs

 

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

 

Hornbeam has a  Janka     of    1630 ft lbs and a crushing strength of 7320 lbs/sq inch

English Oak                                   1120                                                          6720

Apple                                              1730                                                          6030

Beech                                              1450                                                         8270

Elm                                                     810                                                         4740

Ash                                                  1480                                                          7400

Holm Oak                                        1610                                                          no data

 

first of all that list of numbers is highly suspect and secondly this test does not "break" the wood.

 

the janka test uses a press to find out how much pressure is needed to force a hemisphere at .0444" diameter into the wood on three surfaces. these are the face, side and endgrain. then an average is given as the hardness from those three figures.

 

here is one of the tools used.

 

the test has been done on thousands of different species but as most of these are commercial timbers the "hardest" wood may not be one of them. also the inaccuracy is a major problem as sometimes you only get a couple of sources and these can differ greatly in their findings.

 

my mate eric at the wood database did a great video about the buloke species (supposed to be the hardest) and he has tons of books and has don years of research on the subject to try and get his website as accurate as possible.

 

 

 

one thing to remember after digesting all the info you find on the hardness of wood is that is the hardness of a timber has absolutely nothing i repeat nothing to do with how easily the timber will split. not all hard timbers are that interlocked.

 

the interlocking of the timber grain is what makes the timber hard to split.

 

[Billhook]

Every day is a learning day for me here!  Thank you for that Steve

[timbernut]

Hornbeam was also used for industrial flooring, though I’ve often wondered where they sourced decent volumes of it to mill. Shit outside though

[Rough Hewn]

Fab video. [emoji106]

[woody paul]

Today split some Green knotty Horse Chestnut well tried to lumps were 30'' across and 1m long with my riko 25T splitter it just did not want to know until I cut them into half there length.  

[Acerforestry]

On 24/10/2018 at 00:42, nepia said:

Eucalyptus even when wet can be a bastard because it grows in a spiral.  I've been trying to split some recently and have given up on anything longer than 12" as I'm more destroying the logs than splitting them.

 

I acquired some 20" dia hornbeam a couple of years ago that wasn't a problem at all recently (Oxdale 400 splitter) except for the fact that most of the rings had been cut at 30 degrees to the grain direction so had a habit of not staying where they were told.

I'll second that...eucalyptus is the worst I've tried, it actually seems to get easier with drying and cracking though, I found. It burns fantastic however, temp on a wood stove goes off the scale