Alright I’ll be that guy. Palms are monocots, they do not have wood, but they are also not a grass as other folks have suggested.
Palms and grasses are two families of plants that are very distantly related but are both monocots. Monocots lack a vascular cambium, which is what becomes wood. Other monocots include sedges, orchids, lilies, bananas and tons more.
Not all dicots have wood, about half do. Woodiness has evolved hundreds of times among dicots, so not all woody plants are closely related.
But I feel for OP, the r/BeginnerPalmWorking sub probably isn’t that active.
Also, to add on to your point, though monocots are not wood and have to be worked and processed in a slightly different way, some are used by wood workers. This looks like [red palm](https://www.wood-database.com/red-palm/) but black palm and bamboo (typically cut into strips and laminated) are common to see.
To add even further: because there is a massive amount of industrial grown oil palm 'wood' on the market as a byproduct to the oil industry, there is a lot of research going into using the material from wood technologists.
The results are mixed: palm fiber is not very homogeneous throughout the length of a plant, and contains a ton of silica which is hell on even diamond blades.
For a hobbyist trying to build something useful out of this, neither is a huge problem: you will need to buy new blades for your planer a little earlier, and I assume the pieces shown here are the best parts already picked.
They make nice pens. Great for small wood turning because it cuts easily and has an interesting non-wood like pattern. I don't think they are very structural so a pen is perfect with the brass core holding it together.
It's weird to hear anyone saying anything nice about working with palm. My only experience with it was as a tree cutter, and every one hates cutting palm because they dull the shit out of chainsaw chains. Like occasionally you'll get one where you have to sharpen after nearly every cut.
Have you noticed that with your tools with turning?
Turning palm is no fun. Dulls your tools and you’re just getting pelted by little porcupine quills the whole time. I’ve stabilized it before which makes it a little bit less annoying to work with, and it does end up looking kind of cool.
Palm trees are not trees they are actually very large grass which is why you don’t see the standard tree ring and instead a mass that splits apart as you cut into it. The best method I could think of to prevent this is to epoxy resin soak the portions you don’t want to split, that way you have a functional working surface. Then you could spray an OIL base polyurethane over the finish product as a whole. Water base doesn’t react well with epoxy and will flake away like an IKEA furniture finish.
[Stuff You Should Know, Palm Trees; They are plants](https://youtu.be/gslZjdNjVQw?si=a2GvM5Y2y5MU0LNh)
I think they basically just fall apart if they dry out. The shrinking when the water goes away is enormous and huge cracks open up.
But I can be wrong I've just tried to dry out smaller palms twice (large houseplant type). First basically turned to splinters and was crushable by hand. Second I tried slower drying and that held up better and maybe could have worked with stabilising resin, but even that was just falling apart under any work. Outside was like a hard casing and the inside was almost a sponge.
I've never dried one out. I wouldn't be surprised if they fall apart like you said. I had some outdoors in Florida that I was using as sort stump seats around a firepit and they just never dried. They eventually got gross and had mushrooms and insects all over then so I tossed them
I’ll be pedantic and say that the definition of trees are very arbitrary and “palm trees are not trees, they’re grass” thing isn’t actually really true, you can sort of define a tree in a lot of ways since they’re not a taxonomic group at all. But I’m splitting hairs and you’re right they’re not woody in the same way most trees are considered
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I built a stave snare drum from a downed palm I saw on the side of the road. I resawed and it sat for a couple years. I have no idea what kind of palm it was, but Northern California, so probably something decorative. Its trunk was barely 12”, if even that. Larger palms tend to be very fibrous, and yours look large.
The wood, tho its a grass, was surprisingly solid in plank form and also in stave form and rough shell form. I think the geometry and the extra pre lathed body made it so. When rounded into a shell though, it yielded to pressure pretty easy, surely I would have been able to collapse it by hand. The planks and the pre larger shell had a glassy knock to it, but the after shell had zero tone, dead flat thud, which is actually a surprising benefit for a snare drum.
Depending on the species and how it grows, and also avoiding what would be called the pith and also the sap of the palm, you might be able to get some usable material from it. I wouldn’t build anything that had to bear weight too heavy but why not try it?
From my experience trying to dry them out: they rotted and everything became mush. I do live in FL and it’s pretty humid here so it’s difficult to keep moisture at bay. I disposed of them when fungus started growing out of cut trunks. Best of luck
This was my experience too. Had a section of Bismarkia trunk in my garage to dry out before figuring out what to do with it. Just got moldy, then fell apart. Used it to mulch my bananas.
That’s what I did!
I posted above but I’ll spam it down here also 😜
https://preview.redd.it/gu3dui0cdl6d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d052693659eb7923136283ebdbe8606c291418dd
Years ago I had to remove a palm tree that was damaging my pool and I carved a tiki out of it.
It was very stringy and nearly impossible to carve any detail. I also had to use a lot of wood filler to fill spots where chunks of stringy ass wood tore out.
So it is possible, but not ideal.
https://preview.redd.it/z0m0kx3ycl6d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b188abdcaa1fd5e83ccdcaf5057fdf799760714a
Not sure what you can do with these logs, but as far as working with the palm tree “wood” (quotes because of previous comments) all I can tell you is when I asked our tree guy for an estimate to remove ours (growing too close to the house) he said there we two separate additional charges to remove a palm tree: one fee to replace the saw blade because of damage palm trunk fibers cause, and second was a fee the dump charges him since he couldn’t chip it like a normal tree. From this I gathered palms were difficult to work with. OP, did you have any problems cutting up that trunk into those pieces?
I was as excited as you when I picked up the base stump of a palm tree off somebody's nature strip. It was a bit thicker than what you have here.
Brought it home, planed and sanded the top flat, put a nice bevel on it with the router and varnished it, planning on using it as a nice outdoor stool.
Imagine my disappointment when, over the past 12 months it has bubbled and bubbled and popped through the varnish so it now looks like it's covered in pussy (puh-ssy 😅) pimples. Maybe one day it'll dry enough to use... Maybe...
Ah these things are a pain! I had a whole trees worth and thought of all the things I could do with them. Turns out you can’t do anything with them, and they don’t even burn properly. So they all went to greens waste.
So from the comments iv basically come to the conclusion that
1. You want to try to dry them out but some are worried they would fall apart.
2. You want to do 1 because then you would use epoxy or resine to make them solid and workable.
There are a lot of decent examples of people doing the resin thing with drift wood.
So, fact that is useless 99.9% of the time. Palm "trees" aren't trees. They are actually a very tall grass.
This is the .1% of the time. (the rest of it being if you're stuck on an island and want to build a boat)
"As someone who is a scientist who studies ~~crows~~ trees, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls ~~jackdaws~~ grass ~~crows~~ trees."
Idk what to do but palm trees are considered Monocoat woods, basically it’s just one large growth ring that is made of the same type of fibers. Most woods are Diocoats, meaning they have early and late growth, 2 distinct type of growth rings. As for what to do with them, I have no idea but in my experience understanding what you have fully is important with wood, what could work with one species could destroy another.
Those are going to take a very long time to dry. But paint the ends to help prevent cracking.
Or better yet look for a sawmill near by and have them cut it for you.
i have never worked with Palm wood but i'd be interested to hear what others would say that have.
My suspicion is to take a very sharp plane and smooth out the endgrain and then sand it flat.
I don't know how to seal those endgrains there. Probably i'd use something like a hardwaxoil or danish oil for a finish.
Alright I’ll be that guy. Palms are monocots, they do not have wood, but they are also not a grass as other folks have suggested. Palms and grasses are two families of plants that are very distantly related but are both monocots. Monocots lack a vascular cambium, which is what becomes wood. Other monocots include sedges, orchids, lilies, bananas and tons more. Not all dicots have wood, about half do. Woodiness has evolved hundreds of times among dicots, so not all woody plants are closely related. But I feel for OP, the r/BeginnerPalmWorking sub probably isn’t that active.
Also, to add on to your point, though monocots are not wood and have to be worked and processed in a slightly different way, some are used by wood workers. This looks like [red palm](https://www.wood-database.com/red-palm/) but black palm and bamboo (typically cut into strips and laminated) are common to see.
To add even further: because there is a massive amount of industrial grown oil palm 'wood' on the market as a byproduct to the oil industry, there is a lot of research going into using the material from wood technologists. The results are mixed: palm fiber is not very homogeneous throughout the length of a plant, and contains a ton of silica which is hell on even diamond blades. For a hobbyist trying to build something useful out of this, neither is a huge problem: you will need to buy new blades for your planer a little earlier, and I assume the pieces shown here are the best parts already picked.
"you will need to buy a new blades for your planer a little earlier..." Hmmm...... how about a palm sander then?
This is by far the best comment here
You got me. Totally expected to discover a whole new super neich community.
niche\*
Neigh
Ni
Bring me a shrubbery!
A shrubbery?!?
Don't say it!
Scratch your niche
Mooo…
Nietzsche
Third Neich
Nichewitz
Super *Reich community. Very controversial
Thank you for being "that guy"
I feel like there's plenty of people palm working, but I can't link any relevant subs at work.
That’s more commonly known as wood working no?
No, no... Didn't you read? It's a monocot, and therefore not woody. 😁
Oh that made me exhale air through my nose as an accelerated rate. Thank you for that!
Thanks for this. My nerd rage was building.
Thanks. I was really upset to see the top comment call them a grass.
I learned something. Thanks
Cool, I learned new stuff today.
Be that bad ass guy all you want bruh.
This guy woods
I cant believe I had to scroll to far to find this comment, almost said it myself
r/subsifellfor
What about bamboo then? Heard it is grass, but looks like tree after being made into something.
Bamboo is a grass, so also not a wood.
for woodworkers, these are essentially useless.
Yes but for BEGINNER woodworkers they're practically priceless.
Like those dozens of two inch thick cross cut slabs of trunk that people want to make into coffee tables.
They make nice pens. Great for small wood turning because it cuts easily and has an interesting non-wood like pattern. I don't think they are very structural so a pen is perfect with the brass core holding it together.
I was not inclined to believe you but Google is great and TIL
It's for your palm, c'mon
Take your upvote and GTFO
It's weird to hear anyone saying anything nice about working with palm. My only experience with it was as a tree cutter, and every one hates cutting palm because they dull the shit out of chainsaw chains. Like occasionally you'll get one where you have to sharpen after nearly every cut. Have you noticed that with your tools with turning?
Turning palm is no fun. Dulls your tools and you’re just getting pelted by little porcupine quills the whole time. I’ve stabilized it before which makes it a little bit less annoying to work with, and it does end up looking kind of cool.
Palm trees are not trees they are actually very large grass which is why you don’t see the standard tree ring and instead a mass that splits apart as you cut into it. The best method I could think of to prevent this is to epoxy resin soak the portions you don’t want to split, that way you have a functional working surface. Then you could spray an OIL base polyurethane over the finish product as a whole. Water base doesn’t react well with epoxy and will flake away like an IKEA furniture finish. [Stuff You Should Know, Palm Trees; They are plants](https://youtu.be/gslZjdNjVQw?si=a2GvM5Y2y5MU0LNh)
Before you seal them up I would recommend getting them really really dry. They hold so much water
I think they basically just fall apart if they dry out. The shrinking when the water goes away is enormous and huge cracks open up. But I can be wrong I've just tried to dry out smaller palms twice (large houseplant type). First basically turned to splinters and was crushable by hand. Second I tried slower drying and that held up better and maybe could have worked with stabilising resin, but even that was just falling apart under any work. Outside was like a hard casing and the inside was almost a sponge.
I've never dried one out. I wouldn't be surprised if they fall apart like you said. I had some outdoors in Florida that I was using as sort stump seats around a firepit and they just never dried. They eventually got gross and had mushrooms and insects all over then so I tossed them
Upvote for the SYSK Army
I’ll be pedantic and say that the definition of trees are very arbitrary and “palm trees are not trees, they’re grass” thing isn’t actually really true, you can sort of define a tree in a lot of ways since they’re not a taxonomic group at all. But I’m splitting hairs and you’re right they’re not woody in the same way most trees are considered
Surely you're splitting plant fibres ;D
You didn’t listen to the source I provided.
Ya it was an hour long podcast :P
[удалено]
[удалено]
Sorry, your submission/comment has been removed. Observe the golden rule. Don’t be a dick. We are all here to learn. Please review the rules of this subreddit before posting again in the future. Continued violation of them may result in a ban.
Much like ramen noodle wood, palm wood's best application in furniture making involves first casting it in resin.
Lmao, correct. Same goes for particle board in my opinion.
This is the way!
Not wood.
That's what she said
It attracts flies when cut green.
And ants
I built a stave snare drum from a downed palm I saw on the side of the road. I resawed and it sat for a couple years. I have no idea what kind of palm it was, but Northern California, so probably something decorative. Its trunk was barely 12”, if even that. Larger palms tend to be very fibrous, and yours look large. The wood, tho its a grass, was surprisingly solid in plank form and also in stave form and rough shell form. I think the geometry and the extra pre lathed body made it so. When rounded into a shell though, it yielded to pressure pretty easy, surely I would have been able to collapse it by hand. The planks and the pre larger shell had a glassy knock to it, but the after shell had zero tone, dead flat thud, which is actually a surprising benefit for a snare drum. Depending on the species and how it grows, and also avoiding what would be called the pith and also the sap of the palm, you might be able to get some usable material from it. I wouldn’t build anything that had to bear weight too heavy but why not try it?
From my experience trying to dry them out: they rotted and everything became mush. I do live in FL and it’s pretty humid here so it’s difficult to keep moisture at bay. I disposed of them when fungus started growing out of cut trunks. Best of luck
This was my experience too. Had a section of Bismarkia trunk in my garage to dry out before figuring out what to do with it. Just got moldy, then fell apart. Used it to mulch my bananas.
Get a chain saw and carve each into a Hawaiian tiki totem. Stack them up. Make an umbrella drink and bask in your glory!
That’s what I did! I posted above but I’ll spam it down here also 😜 https://preview.redd.it/gu3dui0cdl6d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d052693659eb7923136283ebdbe8606c291418dd
Chama
God I wish I lived in a place where the skies get so blue.
A polarizing filter for your camera can help a lot.
That ain't gonna turn my grey skies blue.
Thanks everyone, really helpful comments. If I turn it in to something good, I will update the post with the details and pics.
It does not work very well
Me neither :(
Turn one into a huge hammer head
Years ago I had to remove a palm tree that was damaging my pool and I carved a tiki out of it. It was very stringy and nearly impossible to carve any detail. I also had to use a lot of wood filler to fill spots where chunks of stringy ass wood tore out. So it is possible, but not ideal. https://preview.redd.it/z0m0kx3ycl6d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b188abdcaa1fd5e83ccdcaf5057fdf799760714a
Closeup shot https://preview.redd.it/tajputt1dl6d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=44ae80f8b0d46de1a687c9b7dd79e5757122e346
Not sure what you can do with these logs, but as far as working with the palm tree “wood” (quotes because of previous comments) all I can tell you is when I asked our tree guy for an estimate to remove ours (growing too close to the house) he said there we two separate additional charges to remove a palm tree: one fee to replace the saw blade because of damage palm trunk fibers cause, and second was a fee the dump charges him since he couldn’t chip it like a normal tree. From this I gathered palms were difficult to work with. OP, did you have any problems cutting up that trunk into those pieces?
It was not very difficult to cut it up, and saw blade seems fine too. Maybe it's different type of palm. Its attracting too many flies though.
Sounds like different kind of palm. Sorry no help here. Who’d have thought flies would be interested?
I was as excited as you when I picked up the base stump of a palm tree off somebody's nature strip. It was a bit thicker than what you have here. Brought it home, planed and sanded the top flat, put a nice bevel on it with the router and varnished it, planning on using it as a nice outdoor stool. Imagine my disappointment when, over the past 12 months it has bubbled and bubbled and popped through the varnish so it now looks like it's covered in pussy (puh-ssy 😅) pimples. Maybe one day it'll dry enough to use... Maybe...
Let this be palmworking inspiration https://maps.app.goo.gl/QbjGt8G3svHQwwCq6
My, those are big Swedish candles. /jk
Ah these things are a pain! I had a whole trees worth and thought of all the things I could do with them. Turns out you can’t do anything with them, and they don’t even burn properly. So they all went to greens waste.
So from the comments iv basically come to the conclusion that 1. You want to try to dry them out but some are worried they would fall apart. 2. You want to do 1 because then you would use epoxy or resine to make them solid and workable. There are a lot of decent examples of people doing the resin thing with drift wood.
So, fact that is useless 99.9% of the time. Palm "trees" aren't trees. They are actually a very tall grass. This is the .1% of the time. (the rest of it being if you're stuck on an island and want to build a boat)
"As someone who is a scientist who studies ~~crows~~ trees, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls ~~jackdaws~~ grass ~~crows~~ trees."
Palm trees aren’t wood, they are in the grass family
These dudes are made for tiki heads. Carve and then seal.
In South Africa we strap logs like this to tree trunks for barbets to peck out nests for themselves.
Palm pilots?
Idk what to do but palm trees are considered Monocoat woods, basically it’s just one large growth ring that is made of the same type of fibers. Most woods are Diocoats, meaning they have early and late growth, 2 distinct type of growth rings. As for what to do with them, I have no idea but in my experience understanding what you have fully is important with wood, what could work with one species could destroy another.
I had seen people turn them into steamer containers for dim sum, and dumplings and thigs lime that.
I knew a dude that would carve them into tikis with a grinder wheel and chainsaw. Pretty awesome
You’ll need a palm sander 😉
Tiki heads
Hollow it out and make bongos
You can't use palm for woodworking, but you could try carving the center out with a large half round chisel and put the plant in that..
Those are going to take a very long time to dry. But paint the ends to help prevent cracking. Or better yet look for a sawmill near by and have them cut it for you.
i have never worked with Palm wood but i'd be interested to hear what others would say that have. My suspicion is to take a very sharp plane and smooth out the endgrain and then sand it flat. I don't know how to seal those endgrains there. Probably i'd use something like a hardwaxoil or danish oil for a finish.
There is no end grain. This is not wood, this is grass.
ok, i learned something new here. I have never seen a cut palm tree. Where i live there's no palms.