This is jatoba. it's a hardwood from Brazil. I was trying some different techniques to mitre a corner together. The corners will have a square cut out of them to accept a tenon from a leg.
Here you can see layout marks for a biscuit that went into the sample on the right.
I traced the layout of the mortise with a sharpie so it would show up better here for you.
The boards on the left got cut out with a band saw before they were glued together. The boards on the right were glued together first.
This is what happened as I hit the chisel with enough force to move the moon. It was the only way to get them to cut the jatoba at all.
So after about 20 minutes with the chisel and the end of the corner blown out this is as far as I got, compared to the somewhat rough mortise from the bandsaw which took 5 minutes.
I sharpened my chisels before starting but they've turned pretty useless by now. Beating on this jatoba is like smacking them on steel. I'm off to Lee Valley Tools to buy a a
honing guild. I'll be thinking about some Japanese steel chisels if I ever make anything else out of this particular hardwood again.
Cheers!
-G
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