Honduras Rosewood Burl

Col Defender

Col Defender

Joined
Nov 11, 2011
Messages
1,398
One of my best customers just discovered Honduras Rosewood Burl and may want me to make a knife for him with handles from this stuff.

It is scary expensive - are there any pitfalls in working with it? I would hate to buy the wood and then have something go wrong. Do I do a TruOil finish, just buff it or what? Is it highly susceptible to cracking? etc

Thanks

Steve
 
Contact Pop's ( James Poplin). He has some great rosewood burl in both large slabs and stabilized scales/blocks. His prices were very reasonable.
I bough four more slabs from him last year and they are stunning. I cut them up into blocks and have dried them for an additional year and a half, and they are on the way to the stabilizer right now.


I have used it stabilized, but it should be fine un-stabilized if well seasoned. Any good oil finish should work.
 
Is James Poplin of Pop's knife supply?

I've read of stabilizing Rosewood, but never saw the need. Rosewood is so dense 'n heavy it will sink in water. The very nature of burl might make it a good idea for Rosewood burl (Beautiful stuff!). Just sand that stuff to 2,000 grit and it will normally polish up nice, then just a bit of a good wax finish. I've started using Tru-Oil finish with great success just following Stacy's (and other folk's) recommendation for applying Tru-Oil. Easy to apply, but does take several coats.

Love Rosewood
 
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From what I was told by one timber importer back mourned 2012, they opened up a short importation window for stuff from Belize that had been legally cut down for road projects, etc few years back, so there is some around, just not much. Of course, it took them like 10 years to get that stuff authorized for export. ;) I bought a few pieces that I used on the bottoms two knives and should have bought more when I had the chance! I got the piece for the little knife on top form Mark Farley that he scored from a guy who had been sitting on a piece of brut for years and have a couple of more pairs of scales stashed away. Get it while you can!!! :mad:
Metalhead0483 said:
Just don't try to import it...
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Ben, have you ever come across really dark stuff like in the second knife I posted? The guy from Belize called it "Belize Black" and said that he only saw it in certain small areas where the soil had some unusual mineral content. That one piece was attached to a nasty little 115W8 blade that I kinda wish I had kept.
Greenberg Woods said:
Shoot me an email
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Yeah, more idiocy. What do they plan to do with the FARMED rosewood that is grown for shade on tea and coffee plantations in India, the source of a substantial amount of our current supply of East Indian Rosewood aka Dalbergia Latifolia.? Oh, wait, We wouldn't want to inconvenience customs officials by requiring them to disntiguish between species. :rolleyes:
Spalted said:
CITES is reviewing a proposal to list ALL rosewoods as an Appendix II material.
https://cites.org/sites/default/files/eng/cop/17/prop/060216/E-CoP17-Prop-55.pdf
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