Horsewright
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2011
- Messages
- 13,182
We have a large hacienda style home and over the years have bought quite a bit of Mexican furniture to furnish it. Much of it is mesquite, solid mesquite like our kitchen table here:
Thing probably weighs 500-600 lbs. Took five big guys to deliver it. Or the bar here:
There is a furniture store in Bakersfield that specializes in this stuff. They go down to a village outside of Guadalajara, that has been making furniture since Cortez, a couple times a year. They bring back all this solid wood (no press board here), furniture that they finish in their home shop before selling it in their store. We've become friendly with the couple that owns the store and I've made the husband Enrique a knife with a mesquite handle as a gift as they had gifted us the mirror behind the bar. On his trips down to Mexico he has shown the knife to some of his furniture makers and they have given me boards for knife handles, mostly mesquite. Last time we were down the hill there, we were picking up a new bedroom set from their home shop and after we had it all loaded in the stock trailer Enrique came out with these two boards. The large one was obviously mesquite but Enrique through his son, as he doesn't speak English and my Spanish is terrible, said he didn't know what the smaller board was.
Its about 2.5" by 5" by 40". Enrique said that the furniture maker that gave it to him didn't know what it was either. It was ironwood heavy and ironwood hard and obviously had sat around someplace for a long time.
Well it sat around the shop for a few weeks till I was able to get around to it. I was gonna do a post here hoping Ben would know what this was but as soon as I cut into it I knew what it was. It had a distinct smell kinda like dill pickles, yeah thats it dill pickles and the sawdust was a distinct dark gold.. I was cutting off a small piece on one end that was badly cracked and this is what I got:
Yep bocote! Ya know I've used lots of bocote over the years. Its a great handle material. Years ago I made a pretty good trade with a Luthier and he gave me a pretty big chunk of nice bocote but I'd been running out. Got a bunch now. First couple knives from the new bocote:
I made Enrique and his son each a knife with the bocote handles too. We'll deliver them the next time we head down the hill. Made up a couple from that huge mesquite board too:
Thing probably weighs 500-600 lbs. Took five big guys to deliver it. Or the bar here:
There is a furniture store in Bakersfield that specializes in this stuff. They go down to a village outside of Guadalajara, that has been making furniture since Cortez, a couple times a year. They bring back all this solid wood (no press board here), furniture that they finish in their home shop before selling it in their store. We've become friendly with the couple that owns the store and I've made the husband Enrique a knife with a mesquite handle as a gift as they had gifted us the mirror behind the bar. On his trips down to Mexico he has shown the knife to some of his furniture makers and they have given me boards for knife handles, mostly mesquite. Last time we were down the hill there, we were picking up a new bedroom set from their home shop and after we had it all loaded in the stock trailer Enrique came out with these two boards. The large one was obviously mesquite but Enrique through his son, as he doesn't speak English and my Spanish is terrible, said he didn't know what the smaller board was.
Its about 2.5" by 5" by 40". Enrique said that the furniture maker that gave it to him didn't know what it was either. It was ironwood heavy and ironwood hard and obviously had sat around someplace for a long time.
Well it sat around the shop for a few weeks till I was able to get around to it. I was gonna do a post here hoping Ben would know what this was but as soon as I cut into it I knew what it was. It had a distinct smell kinda like dill pickles, yeah thats it dill pickles and the sawdust was a distinct dark gold.. I was cutting off a small piece on one end that was badly cracked and this is what I got:
Yep bocote! Ya know I've used lots of bocote over the years. Its a great handle material. Years ago I made a pretty good trade with a Luthier and he gave me a pretty big chunk of nice bocote but I'd been running out. Got a bunch now. First couple knives from the new bocote:
I made Enrique and his son each a knife with the bocote handles too. We'll deliver them the next time we head down the hill. Made up a couple from that huge mesquite board too:
