Curly Lychee

[ASDLF22]

The lumber store had a piece of Curly Lychee and a piece of Iroko when I stopped in there the other day. Since I haven't had the opportunity to have either piece before - I naturally bought them and figured I would find something to use them for. Figured I would whip out a couple of "quick" Treble Clef Clocks. Ha!

That Lychee makes cutting oak seem like running a hot knife through warm butter. Granted these are both rather thick pieces - the Lychee is 1&1/8", the Iroko is 1". Needless to say - my "quick" clocks turned into a much more time consuming project than I normally spend on them.

Couple questions.

1) I wound up using some #9 Olson PGT blades - took 4 blades to cut 2 clocks from that Lychee. The Iroko cut fairly easily and used my normal FD #9 SR. I haven't used the skip tooth blades before and was wondering if that may be helpful in very hard and thick woods. Any thoughts on blades for thick and hard woods?

2) Neither wood took real well to my normal finishing, which is a shot of Deft spray lacquer. I've run into this problem with a few other woods as well - Murado (Rosewood) is the one most recent. The lacquer starts running off the wood as soon as you start shaking the can prior to even spraying it!

So - recommendations on blades for very hard and thick woods and finishing techniques on those woods that just don't like spray lacquer.

Thanks...

[Hawaiilad]

Douglas I use Lychee from time to time and I finish it with MinWax Poly....I use foam brushes to apply it. I think I use #7 or 9 blades as well for cutting....pretty hard stuff isn't it.

[Terry Jay]

I was cutting bowls from 1.25" Big Leaf Maple and found that #5 FD Polar (skip tooth) cut a lot better than #9 FD UR. Not all that hard but thick and need to clear out the cuttings.
Terry