A Ghost from My Past

I was down in the shop a lot this weekend, getting ready for my woodworking class next Saturday. I, and three other NCWA (Northwest Corner Woodworkers Association) members, are going to make spokeshaves. The metal parts are packaged in a kit by Veritas Tools. We have to make the wooden body and put it all together.

It shouldn't have taken so much time, but there were complications -- and errors. The biggest mistake was my choice of wood. I wanted something exotic (expensive) and chose a piece of cocobolo. It's beautiful, but extremely hard*, and therefore difficult to machine. A knot in the middle of my piece only made matters worse. It didn't take long to dull the blades of my jointer and plane.

I was using a plastic drafting triangle to check one of the settings on my table saw, and left it on the cast iron table for an hour or so. (I bought it for my solid geometry drawing class in grammar (high) school 57 years ago.) When I removed the triangle, it left this mark on the table. I wasn't able to remove it with steel wool.

* The specific gravity of dry wood is 0.89. With normal moisture content, it is greater than 1.0 -- in non-scientific terms, it's heavier than water and will not float.

P.S. Another reason not to use this wood, from the Wood Database:
Allergies/Toxicity: Notoriously allergenic. Reported as a sensitizer; can cause skin, eye, and respiratory irritation, as well as nausea, pink-eye, and asthma-like symptoms.