What's the hardest wood of them all?

Um, this guy?

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This guy apparently has several of them…

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And he’s also an asshole.

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As a teen, I took Akido, Judo, and ballroom dancing from a fantastic sensei. At one point I was allowed to start learning different weapons. Most everybody had their own equipment. The loner equipment was beat-up and every staff was bent. I would find that most staves were bent, as one hakama wearing veteran, in front of me noted, “like dicks, they all have a little English”. (I had never heard the term before, and that made me the butt of many a joke that day.) I was instructed that the benefit of working with a softer (less expensive) wood was it could be made more or less true with patience and some properly heat.

One of the black belts had commissioned an amazing staff made of Brazilian Ironwood. It was perfectly straight, dark dark brown, and it weighed a tonne. Our sensei picked it up and wielded it like it was any other staff. He handed it back, “It’ like handling rebar. How did you even find the wood let alone someone to work it‽ Good luck.” Shortly into cycles of a kata several things became apparent. It was too heavy, and thus slow. It was going to take a lot of work to master. Second, after it put a good dent in a few peoples equipment nobody wanted to work with him, and thus was banned. The lesson of the day, “harder and heavier is not necessarily better.”

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Greenheart?

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That’s what she said.

giphy-1

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#1: Quebracho 4,570 lbf (20,340 N)

From the Spanish “quebrar hacha ,” which literally means “axe breaker.” Aptly named, wood in the Schinopsis genus is among the heaviest and hardest in the world.

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I knew I wood like this thread.

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The hardest wood of all… You’ll have to click through to find out what number 1 is!

I checked reddit instead.

Deleting my account now :scream:

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So. What you’re saying is?..

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NSFW

Given that it’s the comment that I came to post, I suspect @TobinL has been beating many hopefuls to it for the past nine hours.

…Wait, that came out wrong.

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BoingBoing: you might leave disappointed, but we’ll never let you down.

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re: Mornginwood

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Or did it? Thanks for that pic. I am going to laughing all evening now.

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I aim to please.

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I can’t believe nobody’s posted this yet.

Obligs (with apologies):

I think I remember this because it had Bruce Campbell in it.

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My dad had some lignum vitae woodworking tools he made himself. I always thought they were cool.

The superman is just unhygienic.

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It is a testament to how sick I am right now that my mind didn’t even connect to the obvious joke that everyone else got. Me, of all people. I still giggle everytime I drive past the sign to Woodrising, a suburb not far from where I live.

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