I’ve tried a few different projects with hempwood. I got a few boards of both face sawn and rift sawn. You can order it here: https://hempwood.com/
I really like the idea of it, and it looks pretty neat so I figured I’d give it a go. Speeds and feeds were done with normal hardwood settings on the nomad. Didn’t see a huge need to change it up. Though possibly multiple finish passes on things would’ve helped, I think I left .5mm stock to leave and maybe leaving that at .75 and stepping in at .25mm increments would’ve helped reduce some of the chipping.
I’ve been doing a few hex boxes for people and it’s a straight forward enough model that it’d be easy to do on this wood. Some results:
You should be able to see some slight chipping on the rift sawn. I did a chamfer which hid some of the chipping on the inside holes. You can also see some fuzzy/stringy bits. Not too worried about that, as it will sand off.
The face sawn tear out was quite a bit more noticeable. I could probably change the model to not have the lip around the vault, and that might help things, but I imagine you’d still have some amount. It’ll be a while before I’m able to fully finish the project.
I think the wood has a unique look, and some people will really like the concept of the wood. Might be ideal for rolling trays for a certain crowd. Making boxes, or picture frames are certainly in it’s wheelhouse, but I think 3d designs is where it’s a bit weak. Also if you do a rolling tray type thing the board can get a bit weak on the rift sawn if it gets thin.
You could probably toss some sort of resin, or penetrating epoxy to stabilize the wood, and I’m sure any complaints I have about this go away. I opted against doing that, mostly because of laziness, but partly because any epxoy/resin in my mind kind of goes against the environmental friendliness of the material.
I also think it’d look really neat with some sort of dye/stain.
Figured I’d post here since I think it’s come up in a few threads, and share my thoughts in the hopes it’s helpful. I think it’s a neat product, but does have some considerations.