Jaymo's Dhar & Neem Close Ups

warty

warty

Joined
Mar 2, 2010
Messages
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I took as good of a close up as I was able today of both types of wood handle.

Things to keep in mind:
Unlike the Saatisal, they don't put the "rouge" coloring/coating on the Dhar or Neem.
Because they are not coated at all, they tend to pick up some dirt and such in transit.
The grain is not going to be as prominent as it will be when I finish sanding them a bit then put a couple coats of Tung Oil on them.

So, these pictures will serve as the "Before" pictures... I will have your "After" pictures in a couple of days...

First, here is the Tamang with the Dhar Handle...
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And here is a close up of the Tamang Handle made of Neem wood...
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I bumped the Neem handled one into the unsheathed Dahr one's blade and you can see the resulting damage in the last ring near the bolster. :grumpy: Story of my life. :(

I am really taken by the look and feel of the Dhar wood and I really hope they are able to get a lot more of it somewhere. The best part about it is that the red color develops over time and it gets deeper and richer. Both handles will look a lot better after a bit of sanding and a few coats of Tung Oil though. Not planning on doing too much sanding as that would ruin all the nice carving work the Kami did for me and I sure don't want to do that!

I will be back with the After pix for you and in the meantime I hope this help Jaymo and whomever else may be wondering about the look of these two premium woods.:thumbup:
 
I have a Tamang with Dhar handle. I'm thinking about sanding it some and giving it a tung oil finish. I'm glad to see I'm not the only fan of tung oil around here.
My custom order Bonecutter is apparently going to have Satisal wood, due to a shortage of Dhar.
I have some cedar and some mahogany I'd like to make handles out of. I'm a big fan of the red woods. I really like Beech when it's stained that orange-ish shade of red that the Europeans use for rifle stocks.
 
When the sun is out, I will have the after shots, they both turned out really nicely and the Neem is amazing when you develop the grain. Tung Oil is great stuff IMO. If I were going to then use these, I would finalize things, once the Tung Oil had set up and dried for a couple days, with some BLO alternated with steel wool polish for a few coats. Since these two are more about collecting (the one I just bought with the Saatisal handle is gonna be my user), I will just leave them since BLO makes them too glossy. I also fixed up the chipped area with a bit of hemp thread as a wrap. It looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

If Neem has antiseptic properties, then that is great! I cut myself with the dang blade a couple times before I remembered to tape the edge while I was finishing it. Then I got a lot of the saw dust into the cuts.. It stung like heck! That must be why. LOL:o
 
I picked up Neem oil in the garden section of the big box store. :p Killed off the bamboo's bugs and smelled great. ;) Put Tru-Oil over the Neem tarwar handle and it came out *spectacular*. Neem needs a finishing coat of tung or Tru-Oil or it's drab-ish.


Mike
 
Neem is a traditionally used medicine in South Asia. You can use it for fungal infections, lice, insect repellent, etc, although the oil is usually made from the seeds rather than the wood. I have a massive neem tree at our holiday home in Mumbai, India. I never knew people used neem wood for making knife handles until I started reading posts on this forum though.
 
Actually, you need to use linseed oil BEFORE you use Tung oil. You can apply stain over and through linseed oil, not with tung. Tung oil polymerizes in the wood and linseed won't penetrate it properly. Plus, linseed oil leaches out when it gets hot, tung doesn't.
Tung oil is the most moisture, rot, and insect resistant of all the oil finishes. You can get as glossy a finish with tung as you want, by buffing it with a piece of wool cloth.
Or you can give it a satin finish with 0000 steel wool.
I'll probably steel wool my Dhar handle, instead of sanding it. It's like microplaning the wood and doesn't remove as much as sanding.
I'll probably use one or two coats of BLO followed by 5-10 coats of tung. This is how I usually finish gun stocks, though sometimes I leave out the linseed oil, as it offers no benefit over tung, except for being able to stain through it.
Since I'm not going to stain the Dhar, it's not an issue.
My satisal handled BC will probably just get 0000 steel wool and tung oil. Or I may just leave it alone. I'll decide when it arrives.

Think I'll make beech scales for my cheap, Indo Khuk and make a water/alky based dye to give it a mahogany tone.

If you've ever seen an unissued Husqvarna M38 Mauser stock, or a CZ .22 rifle stock, or a Weihrauch HW30, HW80, or HW95 stock, you'll know why I like beech so much. It has a grain pattern that resembles laminated wood without the excess weight.
 
warty said:
The finished handles...
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That neem looks like a cross between ash and arctic birch. Unique, yet familiar. Very pleasant to look at. The Dhar, of course, really floats my boat. It's a very attractive wood, to me.

Hard as it is to believe, tung oil has fantastic grip once it hardens. It's not slick at all, contrary to what you may think when you think of oil. I refinished a Chinese SKS stock with it one time and found that the Chinese beech looks beautiful without that godawful varnish, and when properly finished. I spent about 2 months finishing it. The end result was worth it. Tung oil also hardens the wood when it polymerizes. That's something Chinese beech really needs, as it tends to be a little soft.
 
Jaymo said:
Actually, you need to use linseed oil BEFORE you use Tung oil. You can apply stain over and through linseed oil, not with tung. Tung oil polymerizes in the wood and linseed won't penetrate it properly. Plus, linseed oil leaches out when it gets hot, tung doesn't.
Tung oil is the most moisture, rot, and insect resistant of all the oil finishes.
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Then what does the linseed oil do? Or am I misreading this? I ask because I am about to put tung oil on my neem tamang and would like to do it right, haha.
 
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He is saying if you are wanting to use BLO/Boiled Linseed Oil as well as Tung Oil, then you should do them in the opposite order than what I was going to do. Which means I will not be using any BLO now. :)

Well, I learned something. Personally I have used gallons of BLO but I have only just started using Tung Oil. In my experience, you can get an almost shellac like finish out of BLO which was why I thought it best to do it the other way around. Now that I know Tung is the harder of the two when it dries, I will remember to do things the other way around.

Personally, unless I can get a piece of Dhar with some decent grain, I find the stuff pretty plain. Sure, it is a nice, deep and rich red but so is some red paint. ;) Without the grain, it does really grab me like other woods. Not going to rid myself of any of it so please do not bombard me with offers to buy, I just can't get excited about it until I see some really nice piece of it.

The pictures don't do the Neem justice, it has a really nice, deep golden color once treated with the Tung Oil. That and the grain is a lot more prominent now. I have seen some pieces of it look almost like a big chunk of amber with some wild grain running through it so I am going to have to give the nod to the Neem.
 
Hmm, I hope you do find that piece of dhar that just grabs you.

Personally, I prefer lighter colored or very dark colored woods, not reds like dhar, so the neem really does it for me. That, plus the fact that the neem, after I finished sanding it, had a spice-like smoky scent to it. It's hard to describe but is so nice that im tempted to not put linseed oil or tung oil on it, but I know that I should to protect it. How many coats of each would you all suggest?

I'll post pictures of it once I figure out how to do so.
 
I normally use 5 coats or more of tung oil. Linseed only gives about a 10-15% seal against moisture. Tung gives about 75-80% seal.
Most of the time, I use only tung oil. I use linseed on my longbows and ramrods because it keeps them flexible, a trait not needed in a knife scale.

I like light, honey colored woods like maple and holly, and I like reds like cedar, cherry, and mahogany. I don't like dark woods, like walnut. YMMV
A good piece of birdseye maple floats my boat, as does a highly figured fiddleback walnut, even though I'm not a huge walnut fan.


So, how does the satisal wood look after a good clean up? I like rosewood as a bit of a compromise between the reds and the darks.
 
I use three coats of Tung but as I say, I am still learning its ins and outs. I guess I must be using a different kind of BLO than Jaymo if his stays flexible. After the first few coats and steel wollings, I usually wind up with a bit of a shell. This does soak in with time but I have seen some folks go over board with it and wind up with a shellac like shell on their wood...

Neem is spicy smelling when sanded and so, some folks should beware of their allergies. I have some firends that can't be around me when I am sanding some woods. Cocobolo seems to be the number one killer here. Now then, there is a wood. I will say that Cocobolo is easily among my top three woods. I absolutely love the way that stuff looks.

Saatisal... I haven't done any of them yet because I need to understand the rouge the rub on them first. Once I have a better idea of how to remove it, I will probably start fixing up some of the Saatisal as well.
 
Broken Eye said:
Then what does the linseed oil do? Or am I misreading this? I ask because I am about to put tung oil on my neem tamang and would like to do it right, haha.
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Mostly keeps the wood from drying out and cracking. It's better than nothing, for sealing it, but not much. For military rifles, it was cheap and plentiful.
The Japanese Arisaka rifles of WW2 were finished with Tung oil, which was cheap and plentiful for the Japanese. It also prevented rot in the jungles of the South Pacific. Problem is, some people are allergic to it. Luckily, I'm not one of them. It's a great way to harden a pretty piece of wood that's just not quite hard enough.
You can also try Teak oil. It's supposed to harden in the wood, too. However, tung is still better for sealing. I don't know how well Teak oil would work on Neem, Satisal(a type of rosewood, I think?), or Dhar. I have a can of it but haven't gotten around to trying it out. I need one of those round "tuits".

I have nothing against the Neem. I like it a lot. It's a good thing we don't all like Dhar as much as I do, or I'd never be able to get an HI knife with Dhar handles.:D

I have some beautiful red cedar that I'm going to make some knife handles from. I'm also going to split(with my Bonecutter, when it is finished) and draw cut/draw file pretty round, then turn it in the lathe and make handles for safety razors. But that's another forum.:D

I have a piece of mystery wood that a customer found in the floor of an empty trailer and gave to me. It looks like myrtle wood or maybe ambrosia maple without the wormholes. I was going to make some grips for my 1851 Colt Navy replica, but I think I may make knife handles instead.
Also have an 8"x8"x12" block of sweetgum. Talk about a light wood. Creamy looking. I may make knife handles and pistol grips from it. It's very split resistant(try splitting some for firewood).:eek:
I'd like to get some sycamore. It has an interlocking grain pattern that is highly split resistant. It's also a nice, light colored wood.

I recall reading something about the dust from cocobolo being toxic. I like cocobolo a lot. You don't even have to oil finish it. It has a lot of natural oil in it. It's hard as a rock, usually, too. Great for batons/truncheons.
May be able to remove the rogue with Murphy's oil soap and scotchbrite.

If you want BLO or Tung oil to penetrate better, you can thin it with paint thinner. I'm going to try thinning some with turpentine, instead, since it's not petroleum based. When I say flexible, I don't mean like a noodle. I mean it allows the bow or ramrod to flex without breaking. Coal oil or kerosene are good for ramrods, for that reason. They're bad because they will cause worse black powder fouling, at least kerosene is because of being petroleum based. I imagine coal oil is too.

Nothing wrong with BLO. Just be aware of it's limitations.
BTW, warty, nice work on those Tamang handles.
 
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warty
Go to the HI Links Library, scroll down to and click on Tips, Tricks and Useful Finds then go to the second link and click to get info on removing the rouge from the handle.
 
A nylon bristle scrubbing brush, such as a fingernail brush (It's a mechanic thing:D) would be very helpful, as would a hard bristle tooth brush, in addition to the info listed about the oil soap and floss.
Looks like I'll be breaking out the Murphy's oil soap when my BC comes in. Can't wait.:thumbup:
 
Warty,

Another post by Yangdu on what Pala used Neem for:

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=657292&highlight=tamang

Neem Wood

To those of you who may have checked the Internet on information on Neem Wood you may find this personal item interesting. As a child we lived a long ways from medical assistance so my father often cared for us. One of the things he used was Neem Wood to break a fever. He would boil a chunk of wood in water and after cooling give us a glass or two of the water to drink. Yes, it was bitter, but it certainly worked and here I am. If you happen lived far way from medical facility it would be a good idea to carry your Neem wood handle Khukuri with you.
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