I had a nice sized chunk of some Tupelo that a friend who does carving gifted me with, The wood is very soft which makes it perfect for carving decoys but not so much for turning, But it does sand nice which helps tremendously. It also lacks any grain to speak of and is a bland light color which begs to be dyed. The problem I ran into was that the softness of the wood was soaking up all the lacquer I was spraying on it. I ended up brushing on several coats of brushing lacquer with a lot of wet sanding between coats. I was finally able to spray the lacquer at an acceptable level. The cherry for the rim and foot were both scraps from my work bench.