Olive Wood Log

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Recently, our local Woodcraft store had a box of olive wood logs for sale. They were very dry and had supposedly aged for years. I selected a #24 log @ $4/lb, and took it home. I cut it up and got a lot of really good handle blanks for kitchen knives. The wood is 6-7% moisture content, so off it goes to the stabilizer.

The first thing I did was cut it in half along the only large split on the log end. This worked out to perfectly bisect the log with no other splits showing beyond very shallow ones. Next, I cut it into quarters, and sliced the quarters into slabs. IIRC, I got sixty handles for the $100 bucks. Twenty are primo, and the rest are quite good.

 

[Burl Source]

That is the same way I would have cut the log. Follow the cracks and then cut up the good stuff in between.
Usually olive will have a lot more cracks. Looks like you found a good piece. Most of what we get are orchard wood which tends to be a lot more difficult to dry intact.
Pretty wood.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Wherever there was a small crack, I cut along that line. This will prevent later problems.

Many people find it offensive to cut off the ends of a piece and toss "good wood" in the fireplace wood barrel, but if there are small cracks in a wood slab, I cut off at least 1" past the cracks and keep the real "good wood". It is false economy to lessen quality for quantity.

 

[Hengelo_77]

I Love olivewood!
Sweet

 

[butcher_block]

woudl love to find more nice olive and as for waste all the scraps are great in the smoker

 

[PEU]

I have plenty of olive wood, got a nice log time ago. I was told it doesn't stabilize well, yours turned out OK?


Pablo

 

[john april]

nice score !

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

PEU,
I have had good and bad results. The good was on well dried and very low moisture content wood. The bad was on oilier wood with 8-10% moisture.

As you point out, olive usually works quite well as it is.