I get Persimmon close to where I know it is also used as Wooden gold heads, for drivers mostly, but it has been used for complete sets. Louisville Golf
Anyhow my buddy has farms not more than 60 miles from them, he's more East toward the mountains of Eastern Ky, but as far south as Louisville. Where he is, is also where Persimmon grows like a weed in any woodlot, it is actually considered invasive to some, who like my buddy grows trees for a living. He is managing around 1,000 acres of trees, and often brings his persimmon to the local pallet builder, a huge minor industry down there. If it is a good bicolor he'll often cull some out, and swaps wood for services with the local timber mill guy, his guy can kiln dry it, and when done my buddy will list it for sale. I an another friend of his, my cousin, often get some freebs, and both of us will use a lot of that to make him a wooden gift from. All I can say is even kiln dried, cutting into it is always a hit or miss thing. More dried energy in a stick of it than a nuclear reactor could make. Having it go banana, split wildly, cup, curl, curve, or change into a snake, is nothing for it.
Sometimes it does behave enough to do something with though. Below are a few snaps I took of a box I made for his Wife some years ago, Since I have made a few Knick knack shelves, and other stuff they said they needed, including a gun rack Mike wanted to display his muzzle loaders, sadly I am, and have been terrible about taking pics so most are memories from my end, but taking up space on theirs. I took some of these box, made 18 in total, simply because the wood I got then was so bicolor, perfect Persimmon, and it stayed flat, and was easy as Cherry to work, just a lot harder.
As this one sits, the top right corner moved after clamping, so it dried weird. I rounded off the outer edge of all the finger joints, and at finish, you couldn't see the movement. I believe I posted this at Woodnet.net/forum, just to illustrate what another person there had asked for help on. IIRC he opted to break out the finger joints, after soaking them for a day, and then applying heat for 10 minutes. Someone there had suggested this. I countered saying unless it was hide glue, I saw issues trying that. Blew out the entire corner, he did. He ended up sawing out all the corners, and remade the box much smaller in size. His error was smaller than mine, and after routing off the square ends, I ended up doing it to most all of those boxes, because as they got them, folks all commented on how cool the corners looked. Can't fight good reviews. :-) I did put it in an oven at 300 for 30 minutes, after I pulled it out I used some small cauls I made, and reclamped it. I had heard from a Franklin Industries guy that PVA would move easily if heated solidly above 160 to 180, so I flew past that, and went 300. Move it did, actually didn't need rounding off, but I had already thought of it, so I went with it. That stock had been a solid 1 1/8" so a fat 4/4, I resawed it in half exactly so just under 1/2" after flattening it out, and smoothing it up. It worked nicely, I would have been wary to go my normal 3/8" for small box sides for fear of too much movement.
