Tips on Paulownia

Feb 16, 2004 4 Replies
T

I hate to drag this newsgroup back to woodturning (with all of you mourning over the demise of our troll), but I cut up a nice sized (15" to 18" dia.) trunk of a paulownia tree this weekend and wanted some advice. The log had been cut back in October and was sitting outside since. I noticed that there was little or no checking on the ends and that there were no cracks radiating out from the pith. This leads me to believe that this is a fairly stable wood. Is this so? I've heard that this is a very light wood, is it also very soft? I plan on using this wood for some large bowls and hollow vessels. Is there anything I should keep in mind while dealing with this wood? Any other comments or suggestions are also welcome. As usual, if anyone is interesting in trading for some of this please send me an email. Thanks. I now return you to Al's fantasy land. Tony Manella ndd1"at"prolog.net (remove "at")

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Valley Woodturners
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D

I turned a 14X8" bowl out of Paulownia several years ago. It was KD not Air Dried. It turned as easily as AD walnut, was very stabile and had some nice straks through it. It looked a bit like very light walnut in fact. You shouldn't have any problems with it, it turns easily.

Dave in Fairfax

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Joel Crabbe snipped-for-privacy@vvm.com

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S

Hello Tony,

I have turned quite a bit of Royal Paulownia on the lathe and it's a nice (albeit soft) wood to work. It turns well and dries without any significant challenges. It responds well to the gouge and produces magnificent "goose down" shavings when shear scraping. Since its quite soft, be careful when power sanding on the lathe. It's easy to over sand if you do not compensate your abrasive protocol for the extremely fast removal rate of the surface when sanding.

Having said that, it sands very evenly and when polished to a high lustre and produces a wonderful and visually provocative surface grain. It responds well to texturing and carving embellishments and its fine grain structure is an excellent surface for metal leafing, burning, colouring and related inlay work. Due to its light weight and easily marred surface, I prefer to limit its use to decorative objects only. Good luck to you and all the best to you and yours!

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