Off Topic Just showing off some wood

Greenberg Woods

Greenberg Woods

Joined
Dec 27, 2013
Messages
2,667
Hey guys. I sometimes see some questions asking about what "best" or 3A or 4A or 5A wood grades mean.

Ill tell you the truth, they tend to be pretty subjective. I base the grades on my experience with woods, and in my personal opinion a burl or curly block below what the industry would call a 3A is basically not even worth working with for knives, as the figure is meant for furniture pieces. So I wanted to show off a little of my collection of what I would call 5A material.

ZWZe52P.jpg

laJ707L.jpg

nok9yUd.jpg

DB1j3HE.jpg

ANWWzXV.jpg

t7YdUkQ.jpg
 
Gorgeous. I often hear presentation grade and exhibition grade too. Whats the diff there?
 
Horsewright said:
Gorgeous. I often hear presentation grade and exhibition grade too. Whats the diff there?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, it all depends on the seller. In GENERAL exhibition is a higher grade, but I personally feel the terms are confusing and honestly over used. If you see my site, I only have my "Regular" which can be super figured, but I denote the super high quality pieces as "Best," as for me this implies the rarity and quality of the piece relative to its own species. The "Best" piece of curly mango may be worth less than a non best piece of amboyna burl, but at least for me best is used to show it is a rare piece due to something like color, incredible or unusual figure, lack of cracks or damage or just extreme quality.

I think many sellers come up with arbitrary levels of figure for marketing terms, but thats a different talk.
 
Boy, could that title be misconstrued.....LOL

anyway, VERY nice burls - I would concur those are 5A or A+++

I agree that it is all very confusing. FWIW, although that ironwood is very nice, I would not say it is equal in "figure" to the ones above it

Bill
 
No, the i
billf said:
Boy, could that title be misconstrued.....LOL

anyway, VERY nice burls - I would concur those are 5A or A+++

I agree that it is all very confusing. FWIW, although that ironwood is very nice, I would not say it is equal in "figure" to the ones above it

Bill
Click to expand...

No, the ironwood i didn't consider best. The amboyna and satinwood burls were in my opinion.
 
A lot of 3a lumber is used in mid range guitars too. It’s nice, but not what we are looking for. Our handles are too small for the lower figuring to really show well.
 
Willie71 said:
A lot of 3a lumber is used in mid range guitars too. It’s nice, but not what we are looking for. Our handles are too small for the lower figuring to really show well.
Click to expand...

Exactly. 3A figure sounds like a lot, until you realize "A" means no figure and no flaws in the wood. Its part of why knife handle blanks are so expensive, even a mid grade piece would be phenomenal figure in a large size, and what counts as high end figure in knife handle scale is absolutely primo figure to show up on such a small scale.
 
Ben - I have noticed that some stabilized woods develop a “wavy” appearance that does not appear to be present in the unstabilized wood (like the seventh one down in your series). Is this a property of the stabilization process, or some inherent property of the wood that is somehow made visible by stabilization?
 
Cushing H. said:
Ben - I have noticed that some stabilized woods develop a “wavy” appearance that does not appear to be present in the unstabilized wood (like the seventh one down in your series). Is this a property of the stabilization process, or some inherent property of the wood that is somehow made visible by stabilization?
Click to expand...

The 7th one down is not stabilized. That is a billet of high quilt Siamese Rosewood. In general, more dense woods show figure better, because is general dense woods have small, more numerous cellulose tubes, which means that the difference in reflection between the areas were the tubes have been bisected and where they are parallel to a viewer is greater, thus a stronger figure.

That billet has the advantage of being incredibly dense, and the wood is very fine grained.
 
I’m not a big fan of Burls as I don’t love stabilized wood meaning I favor natural hardwoods. Question- which stabilized burls tend to be on the harder side?

some burls I’ve used are too soft for my liking.
 
HSC /// said:
I’m not a big fan of Burls as I don’t love stabilized wood meaning I favor natural hardwoods. Question- which stabilized burls tend to be on the harder side?

some burls I’ve used are too soft for my liking.
Click to expand...

Amboyna Burl, satinwood burl and walnut burl are all quite strong, hard burls.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top