Routing hickory......?

[drlstairs]

Hey, I'm routing some hickory stingers for a housed and wedged stair. I've routed half a stringer and blown apart 2 BRAND NEW router bits. Any ideas?

 

[jeff...]

Take many shallow cuts and go slow. Hickory is about like working with a brick. Pretty wood but hard as a rock.

 

[Dusty Sawyer]

Years ago I built a small picture frame out of some hickory that a friend gave me. The project completely toasted my belt/disk sander. I had a 26 grit belt on the machine and it took forever to remove the slightest about of material. I was in my garage when I cut the miters for the frame and left the cut scrap dancing around on the saw while I went for the next piece. While I was looking the other way I heard a loud bang, but could not figure out the source of the noise. This happened a couple of times until I figured out that the sound was from the scrap catching the saw blade and being thrown against the garage door where it was still stuck.

They don't call it Rock Maple for nothing. The only thing I can add to making repeated shallow cuts would be to go very slow and not burn the bit or the wood. The stuff really can generate enough heat and is hard enough to not only make those bits dull fast, but also make them fly into little nasty pieces.

 

[cskipper]

One word - don't! John made our kitchen cabinets out of air-dried Hickory. I can't tell you how many blades we went through! So when it came time to make the raised panel doors, we found some maple with the same grain pattern. Much easier to manage. :lol:

 

[jeff...]

I still think hickory would make a great bench top and can see it being used for stair treads and flooring. As a bench top, you could beat the snot out of it without harming it. Only thing would be staining (accidental spills of chemicals), but I still doubt my teenage boys could do much damage to it, unless of course I challenged them too. I know they could tear up an anvil :lol:

You might try and run those threads through your tablesaw with the blade angled to get rid of some of the bullnose material first, then come back with your router and take shallow slow passes to finish off your routed profile.

Thanks

 

[dtomasch]

When I have routed ash and hickory stringers,I start with a spiral up cut bit to remove the bulk of the meat. Then, with a second router, preferbally, to prevent bit changes, I repeat the cut with the dovetail bit. I have had relatively good success with this method. I learned quickly that the words Hickory, ash, and kumaru equal much higher priced stairs due to the blade/bit costs and the pure, unadulterated frustration of routing steel. Good luck!. Oh, by the way, did you make your own plow template, or are you using a store bought one?

 

[Kyle]

one word.. CARBIDE

 

[jeff...]

one word.. CARBIDE

What not an [SIZE=-1]oxy-acetylene torch[/SIZE]? :lol: