Katalox

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.

But also bear in mind that many of the negative health effects, although certainly not all of them, are associated with high volume contact among industrial users working in mills and other processing facilities where the amount of contact with dust and wood is much higher than would ever be realistic for a hobbyist user.

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.

Fortunately, I experienced no negative side effects when working with Katalox.

My Personal Experiences

I was only able to work with a small pen blank sized piece of Katalox for my first experience but I enjoyed it a good deal.  Katalox is exceptionally hard so it cut very cleanly on the lathe with sharp fresh tools.  The blank appeared distinctly purplish so I was disappointed when that color quickly gave way to a very dark brown, almost black color which obscured most of the interesting grain figure that was previously visible.  The Katalox achieved a very nice finish once properly sanded and it took a cyanoacrylate finish easily with little noticeable darkening or other color shift.

Katalox Pen

I have larger bowl blank sized pieces of Katalox in my shop stocks, all of which include at least some of the pale yellow sapwood, and I am eager to experiment with those larger Katalox blanks in the making of larger items such as bowls from this interesting wood.  I am especially excited by the challenge of maintaining as much of the Katalox sapwood as possible to exploit the color contrast between the very light sapwood and the extremely dark heartwood.

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!