Petrfied wood - stablize possible ?

rebeltf

rebeltf

Joined
Jan 29, 2005
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Hey folks , first off has anyone ever used petrified wood on a handle ?
Specs are a nice sized piece of "Saddle Mountain" a tad over 1/8 thick , very very pretty stuff , lotsa swirls and colors ranging from red to tan to brown to black.
More for a "drawer queen" knife but , is it possible to use such a material for or on a scale ?
If so , can it be stabilized ?

Thanks folks.

Todd
 
I think if it is petrified, it is about as stable as it gets.
 
Petrified means that organic matter has been replaced by minerals [ petri = stone ] It is stone and acts like it -it might break if dropped .It's as stable as it gets !!
 
Aw, I was hoping someone would go into a long diatribe on how to stabilize the stuff. It'd have to be an interesting read. PW ranges in the 7 - 8 hardness on the Mohs scale. Mostly it's a hard form of quartz. Got to have some pretty decent lapidary tooling to ge a good finish. And like what's been said previous somewhat brittle. Pretty though.
 
Petrified wood is as stable as it gets as the others have said. It doesen't require a lot of fancy equipment to work if you want to spend a litle time on it. A green wheel(aluminum oxide) which is used for sharpening carbide bits will cut it and water proof sandpaper will remove the scratches. If your interested in more details cantact me.
 
I'll have to think on this one.

After fiddling with it , I can see how darn brittle the stuff is , I'm betting if I dropped it it would shatter.
I suppose there are other materials I can use of the same beauty with far more structure that wont break or chip if accidently dropped.

Thanks though for the time and info folks.

I can always make a wall plaque out of it :D
 
Petrified wood is a great stone to knap, I've seen some really cool spear points made out of it. Think about that! :) If you could drill it nicely maybe you could knap it into shape... You've given me an idea anyway. I've been reading a lot about making stone tools lately and hadn't yet considered using stone knapped into a handle. Now I'm getting motivated.
 
Petrified wood is pretty,but has the drawback of being heavy and brittle. Grind slowly and sand to a very fine grit.Polish with white rouge or tin oxide. While there are some petrified woods that have an porous grain structure, most are tightly filled with the replacement silicates and leave a glass smooth surface.
 
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