Bottom of the sock drawer find

jdm61

jdm61

itinerant metal pounder
Joined
Aug 12, 2005
Messages
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Well, not exactly. More like top the storage cabinet hiding in back. ;) I have been buying wood since I started messing around with knives circa 2005-2006. Early on, I picked up a few bowl blanks and turning sticks from a local specialty lumber yard over in Tampa. I got two huge 10 x 10 x 3 and 12 x 12 x 2 bowl/platter blanks of curly maple, of which one, the thicker one, is still intact. At the same time, I picked up a small 5 x 5 x 2 bowl blank of cocobolo. It cut a 3/8slice off of one end and it looked pretty plain and boring and made my nose itch a little bit, so it sat for 9 years. I guess i got smarter in the ensuing years and decided this past week that I might have cut the block on the wrong face so I sanded the wax off of the other five sides and this is what i found. I got 9 scales that are a hair under 4.75 inches long by .42 thick and this is the prettiest looking one. The others don't have quite so much black, but are still very nice. The bad news is that this is oddball #9. The dark spots were at one end of the block. It is still "plain wood" but the color is amazing. The "finish" on this one is the fine kerf radial saw cut finish. The light spot at the bottom left is actually yellow paint that came off the saw blade. I gave it a little rub with some BLO and this is what I got. Kind of like Christmas in May. :D
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Here is a bad pic of all 9 of the scales. I dinged one or two of them with the saw. The pictured one is the second one from the left in the top row.
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One of my favorite handle materials. Pretty piece. Put that on a skinny handled knife like a filet knife or something and ya get both sides of the handle out of the one scale.
 
Karl, I cut it into scales because it was a bit short after my failed experiment of 10 years ago, but in hindsight, i should've kept one small block for some hidden tang project. I guess I can still do a morticed tang on something like a Sendero style hunter where. 80 is plenty thick.
 
Ben, one of the things that made me remember that I had this block was a visit to Woodcraft a couple of weeks back. they had some similar pretty cocobolo boards that were like 3 x 3/8-1/2 x 18 or 24. They wanted like $70 per stick!!!!!!! I thought it might a good idea to revisit my little stash after that and see what I had. :eek: I don't remember what I paid for that blank in around 2007, but I am pretty sure that I walked out with it and those two huge maple chunks for a fair bit less than $70 for the whole lot.
 
With the increase in woodworking, turning and guitars combined with cities listing of coco and then ALL roaewood, cocobolo has about trippled in cost since 2000
 
Greenberg Woods said:
With the increase in woodworking, turning and guitars combined with cities listing of coco and then ALL roaewood, cocobolo has about trippled in cost since 2000
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East Indian plantation wood is about the only type that hasn't gone totally crazy, at least for small pieces. I have been seeing more custom flat top guitars made from cocobolo, blackwood and even kingwood of late.
 
jdm61 said:
East Indian plantation wood is about the only type that hasn't gone totally crazy, at least for small pieces. I have been seeing more custom flat top guitars made from cocobolo, blackwood and even kingwood of late.
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You need a cities permit to bring in plantation east Indian too.
 
Greenberg Woods said:
You need a cities permit to bring in plantation east Indian too.
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I know that all Dalberghia species are on the CITES list, but I was under the impression that most of of what we get is coffee plantation shade tree wood sold at government auctions in India and Indonesia.
 
Every now and then I find a box or bin with something I had forgotten all about. Usually the discovery is followed by, "So that's where that thing is!"

In the early spring, I was getting a box out of the overhead storage loft in the garage. I saw a large wooden box I didn't recognize, and looked in it. It was a box full of turning supplies, lathe jigs and fixtures, and about twenty large turning blocks. There was also a smaller box which had all the parts and exotic wood for a very fancy brass and wood kaleidoscope I was going to turn with my son 30 years ago. I put the regular turning blocks in the pen and knife stock bins, and set the kaleidoscope project in with the projects for the new shop. Sadly, I can't make the project with Chris anymore, but I will think of him when turning it. I will probably invite his best friend, who now is like family to me, to come over and do it with me.
 
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