Once the wood was cut it took a great deal of effort to smooth out the cross-grain cut areas despite the non-cross-grain areas being extremely finely cut with my sharp tools. The experience of smoothing out these cross-cut areas is always a big factor in whether I am keen to work with a wood again or not, and Black Locust didn’t rate highly on that score. Remember that this wood is dense and will resist sanding action.
I think I was most impressed with the color of the wood. The color in my piece was much more of a green than a brown color, perhaps yellowish-green or greenish-yellow, not sure exactly which, but definitely a clear green coloration. Given that the color is said to darken and brown with age this may not matter significantly over time anyway.
In my piece the rays were very pronounced and obvious even without the use of a hand lens, which goes against the common wisdom, but wood is like that; every piece is unique and some pieces cheerfully defy common wisdom about their appearance and behaviors. I found that these rays added considerable interest to the wood in addition to the unusual coloration.
Now that I know how difficult Black Locust can be to work with I am not confident that I will seek it out, especially given the limited market that exists, but I also wouldn’t rule it out completely. I don’t think it would make a good wood for an inexperienced turner, but if you have some reasonable experience, sharp tools and the ability to frequently resharpen, and some considerable patience, you could do worse things than tackle a piece of Black Locust. If some came along somehow and ended up in my shop I wouldn’t toss it out and who knows, perhaps someday I will seek out a challenge and buy it intentionally. Never say never seems like sound wood turning advice to me.
And if you do get frustrated and decide to burn it, remember that it dries extremely slowly and that one potential consequence of burning wet wood is boiling water on the inside that causes pieces to explode in the fireplace. Use caution whenever your burn wood that is not commercially sold as firewood and even then be sensible and use common sense.
As always, I wish all my readers a great experience in whatever their wood working interests happen to be and to those who like working with lathes especially, do a good turn today!