Persimmon is especially difficult to plane, so hand planes are probably a better bet.
Given that Persimmon is almost completely sapwood, it blunts cutting edges surprisingly quickly, although this should be expected from a true Ebony wood. As is so often the case, sharp tools, frequent sharpening, and patience will be rewarded when working with Persimmon.
On the plus side, Persimmon is an excellent turning wood.
Persimmon also finishes well.
Persimmon Interior
Pricing and Availability
Persimmon is rarely, if ever, sold in dimensional lumber formats. More commonly, although still unusual, Persimmon is sold as turning spindles and blocks for bowl making.
One should expect Persimmon prices to be high when compared to other domestic woods and this is because Persimmon is slow growing, so it takes many years to reach a harvestable size. In addition, most Persimmon trees are cultivated for fruit, not for wood, so it is not commonly harvested commercially or processed outside of specialty or hobbyist mills.
Persimmon is most commonly sold in its native areas and prices for imported wood will be much higher or simply unavailable.
In this blog, I almost always recommend several vendors with whom I have done considerable business and in whom I have great confidence. These vendors are: West Penn Hardwoods, Bell Forest Products, NC Wood, Got Wood?, and WoodTurningz.
However, of these fine vendors only NC Wood currently sells Persimmon turning stock and they sell both spindle and bowl blank sizes. The largest bowl blank offered is an impressive 10” x 10” x 4” that sells for $23. All other bowl blank sizes are smaller and cheaper. The spindle sizes, up to 2” x 2” x 24” are all priced in the single digits.
Persimmon Reverse
I find that this rather clearly indicates the limited availability even within the natural range of the wood (I am located in northwestern Georgia).
Woodfinder is an excellent website that is dedicated to advertising wood dealers. In your search for Persimmon, this can be an invaluable resource provided you use multiple search terms to capture all the possible listings. I can’t speak to the quality of any of the listed dealers, but Woodfinder does have the advantage of allowing searches to be performed based on location which might allow an interested buyer to visit a listed wood dealer in person to hand pick pieces at a comfortable price.
A significant problem with using Woodfinder is that many vendors are listed for woods that, upon further investigation, they do not offer. I don’t know if perhaps once they did and they didn’t update their listings or if some vendors use a standardized list of woods that include most everything conceivable with the idea that once you land on their page you will find something you want to buy even if you didn’t know it beforehand. It happens to me all the time!
Uses
Because of its limited availability in lumber formats, the most common use of Persimmon is in the making of turned objects on the wood lathe.
One particularly special use of Persimmon is in the manufacture of golf club heads due to the extreme hardness of Persimmon, some 1,000 Janka hardness units harder than ither Ash or Hickory, two well-known and hard North American woods used for baseball bats and tool handles, both applications which require strength and hardness.
Persimmon may also occasionally be used as veneer or in other small specialty wood applications that take advantage of its hardness.
The most common use of Persimmon is not for wood at all but rather for its distinctive orange-red fruits which are extremely sweet when ripe although notoriously astringent when green. The fruit, once ripe, is quite perishable so it is not commonly sold commercially but those who have access to trees enjoy these sweet natural treats fresh and in baked goods.
Sustainability
Persimmon is not listed as being in any way threatened or endangered by the Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendices nor does it appear on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.