Curly redwood?

Matt Rochester

Matt Rochester

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Nov 28, 2014
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Anybody use it much? I was at a local lumber yard and saw this piece of curly redwood leaning up in the corner. Picked it up for $60. It's about 5' long, 10" wide, and 1" thick. I am thinking of cutting it up and having it dyed and stabilized by K&G. I like the dark brown and natural. I have used redwood burl before that looked similar(part curly, part burl)but this has some vertical lines running in it that I haven't seen. I can probably get 50-60 sets of handles out of it. Anyone have a guess at what it would cost for dyeing and stabilizing it?
 
I understand it's the grain, I just didn't notice it in what I had before. But I didn't have a pice this big either. Is it worth making scales from the whole thing or just the parts where the figure is tight?
hellspawn415 said:
Do you mean the grain lines? Its a quarter sawn piece of wood so you are going to have parallel grain lines that run the legnth of the boarrd....
Click to expand...
 
Personally I would say just the curliest parts but it really up to you. How curly do you think your handles should be?
 
You might consider cutting fewer blocks out, and doing larger blocks. Wood like that tends to look better when the curl is running at an angle to the knife... Or, at least do some bigger blocks, perhaps 6"x2.5"x1". Just a thought.
 
Curly Redwood is very attractive when finished. Cost to stabilize would depend on where you had it done, weight of the pieces after stabilizing and dying, where you live in relation to the the stabilizing service. Cut the best pieces into large bowie blocks and cut the rest into scales.


I recently got a batch back from K&G. I sent them a little over 25 lbs. I got back about 43 lbs. Price was around $430 not including shipping. Ouch.
 
One thing to look out for is how tight, or close together, the curls are. Sometimes a big board looks good but once you cut it down to knife sized blocks, it's not as appealing because you only get a couple curls in that shorter length. If this board is 10" wide, those curls would be pretty wide and far apart on a knife handle.
 
I was planning on cutting them so the curl runs at an angle. I also was going to send them out in blocks so I can cut into scales or use the whole block. Thanks for the input.
 
The other thing to consider is that redwood is just a name. The redwood lumber used for many furniture and decorative projects, like yours, isn'y the redwood root burl we use for knives. There is a big difference in weight and hardness, as well as the look.

Large curl woods look great on the rack at the lumber yard, but often as rather plain when cut into small knife size pieces. Cut 5" off the end and have a few stabilized first before cutting the rest of the board up. It might make a really nice knife display and stands, rather than a knife handle.
 
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