Appropriate protective equipment is therefore always recommended when working with this, or any other, wood, exotic or domestic, unless you have worked with the species before and are certain you are not sensitive to it.
Complete information about health hazards associated with a wide variety of exotic hardwoods is available from The Wood Database. Additional information about how to best use a dust collection system and personal protective equipment, such as respirators, can also be found through this excellent and comprehensive resource.
While I experienced no difficulties while turning Burmese Blackwood, once I started sanding and generating fine dust, I immediately experienced an intense burning in the nostrils and throat. I quickly donned my N95 respirator and I was easily able to continue working with the wood.
My Personal Experiences:
I had a wonderful, if limited, experience of Burmese Blackwood. It cut super clean due to hardness and required little sanding. Once the wood was finely sanded to 800 grit it was beautifully polished with just the natural oils present in the wood. As I noted, the dust was a bit of a challenge in terms of respiratory irritation but it was worth it for the rare beauty of this wood.
My piece was small, just 5″ x 2″ but it has a rich color palate that includes deep, almost black, purple predominantly with streaks of lighter brown and dark black.
Burmese Blackwood
Sadly, my piece also included a section of sapwood, which was clearly demarcated not only by color but by a stress fracture as well. As I feared, the sapwood immediately came free from the edge and I had to cut down the size of the bowl to accommodate this loss. I SHOULD have tried to stabilize the sapwood with some cyanoacrylate glue but I didn’t find the crack deep enough for the glue, not even in thin format, to penetrate, and given the resistance of oily woods to gluing I am not confident that anything could have saved that piece of sapwood.
The first thing I did upon completing the Burmese Blackwood bowl was to try to source supplies of the wood so that I could work more with this amazing material, but I can’t locate single bowl blank. If anyone finds stocks of Burmese Blackwood please let me know, provided of course that you don’t want to keep the source a secret for your own use! And honestly, I couldn’t blame you if you did.
All cuts were made using the Easy Wood Tool system on my Robust American Beauty lathe. Forward chucking was in a Nova Chuck, while reverse chucking was done using a Nova Chuck with Cole Jaws. Sanding was with Gold and Green Wave sanding discs from Packard Woodworks. Final finish is Shellawax.
As always, I wish all my readers a great experience in whatever your wood working interests happen to be and to those who like working with lathes especially, do a good turn today!