Hey Rehd, I did try soaking the wood with hot water. I did not try to steam it in the conventional fashion. It might work OK, but I did notice that the wood became pretty dried out on the surface after saturation with hot water. I think that the steaming process might affect the wood a bit, but likely only at the surface level, which would be sanded off for the most part anyway. It is very dense wood, in a strange sort of way.....different than more common woods (in some ways, it seems more like working with some sort of phenolic (sp??) material). It does not like to be planed against its grain either. It was worth the bit of extra trouble, though. I've read of the stuff being used for large solid wood parts in the construction of big wooden ships (al la WoodenBoat magazine), so it must be pretty durable. I recently experimented with some very thin strips of walnut that a friend had (harvested from an old, fallen tree on his property(.....said he'd walked over the thing for years, then last fall he cut into it with his chainsaw to reveal that beautiful, classic walnut grain!........drug it out of the woods and took it to the mill.....it is becoming living room furniture!) OOps, sorry....anyway, that thin walnut was pretty flexible as compared to the purplheart, but the walnut pieces were very thin and not kiln dried like you'd find at most stores. I'll have to find Spidey's thread about the steam ironing.......pretty resourceful fellow.....that Spidey. I like this forum a lot. You guys come up with the greatest ideas to solve all the little problems of this obsessio.....er.....hobby. garland

: Garland or anyone: Have you tried steaming it via Spidey's method (damp cloth
: and hot iron) or in a home made Steam-Tube? If so, did it make a
: significant difference? I've played with steaming oak, birch, alder, and
: walnut(difficult) for some furniture in the past. I was wondering if the
: density or oiliness of the Purpleheart would affect the steaming process.

: Rehd