Milling Wood Possible?

[Tony Ennis]

Depending what you're doing, a regular drill press with a Forstner bit does well also.

[Your Old Dog]

It is - I have some African blackwood I'm going to turn into a mouthpiece for my bagpipe practice chanter. I turned a short sample and it turns great.

Keep in mind the dust from most all African Hardwoods is highly toxic.

[Evan]

Use high quality tooling and the "swirlys" go away. I use Garr solid carbide cutters. I can't afford cheap cutters. One Garr end mill will outlast 10 "cheap" endmills.

[oldtiffie]

Odd that YOD - the "Tree-huggers" seem to thrive on it. Or do they have an antidote in the water they drink?

[Evan]

Oak is a carcinogen because of the tannin. Many hardwoods regardless of where they originate are either toxic, allergenic, carcinogenic or any combination of those three. However, Jatoba aka Brazilian Cherry, is one of the hardest and stable woods there is and is non allergenic and non toxic. It mills fairly well although not as nice as teak. It can (must) be drilled for fasteners and can hold a bolt as well as aluminum. It taps almost like metal with pefectly formed threads. It's also a lot less expensive than teak.

[rantbot]

I know that most people will respond, "That's insane, don't you know a wood router runs at 20,000 RPM?"

For many centuries craftsmen managed to get excellent results with hand tools which didn't run at 20,000 RPM.

I use the old Bridgeport regularly to cut wood. Sometimes I hold a router bit in a Jacobs chuck, more often I just use cheapo Chinese mill cutters. Spindle speed seems to be of little importance. I get what, in metal, would be called a "mirror" finish when cutting rosewoods (like, say, cocobolo) or maple, but a rougher surface in pine or birch. Were I to start working with a lot of pine or birch, I'd experiment more with better cutters and higher speeds.

Some of the tropical rosewoods, and some oddballs like bamboo, can be allergenic, and if I worked with them on a daily basis I would expect some trouble eventually. But for occasional work I have yet to notice any physiological effects.

[JMS6449]

Try a piece of ipe, used for decks and outside construction. Harder then the jatoba, it is also known as ironwood. Does not stick together with glue or epoxy. Never needs any finish for outdoor used, it oxides. When you cut, it smells like iron, tastes like iron, stains like iron oxide.

Similar woods are purpleheart, greenheart. The purpleheart also oxides and turns from purple to brown when left without a finish.

Carbide cutters are necessary even for drilling holes.

[wierdscience]

Yes it can be turned at low speed,ever see a spring pole lathe?




It can also be single pointed.

[DR]

Metal working machines can do a very good job cutting wood.

The key is the rigidity of the machine.

I have a router bit for finger jointing. This sucker is almost 3" diameter capable of 1" thick wood. It has a 1/2" shank for use in a hand held router. I can't imagine being able to cut with this monster in a hand held tool. Likewise, hand holding a piece of wood to feed into the router mounted in a table.

I tried the cutter in the spindle of my CNC mill at only 2,000 rpm. It cut very smoothly both with climb and conventional cutting.

There seems to be an urban legend that cutting wood on a metal working machine will ruin it. Not so. A good many of the high-end production musical instrument makers are using CNC milling machines and have been doing it for years. The advantages over a CNC wood cutting router are many, price, quality, service, etc, etc.

[sbmathias]

Here's something that I "machined" a while back.

A number of interesting problems arose, such as how to register the pieces, how to clamp them, etc. This was done from scratch, starting with cutting down the apricot tree. A rather impressive piece.
One surface, two edges. As it turns out, there is a whole "family" of related solids with interesting properties.