Scored some cool wood... Now help me figure out what to do with it.

[Fixall]

Every couple of months or so, I tag along with my wife while she goes to garage sales and whatnot. The hope is always that I find some nice, old knives, or some good handle material. It doesn't usually work out (except the time I came home with 50lbs of african blackwood, lol), but today was one of the rare successful outings.

I walked away with some birdseye maple, maple burl, redwood, pau ferro, and box elder burl. I was hoping you guys might help me figure out how to make the best use of it all. I have processed logs on my 14" bandsaw into smaller pieces, and then made blocks and scales on the table saw from there... But the only time I've cut a burl, I had a LOT of help figuring out where to make the cuts.

So first question... Is there a minimum weight that K&G needs before they will dye wood, or can I send small amounts to be dyed? In the past, I've always just done clear stabilization.


Birdseye sugar maple. The board measures 13" x 5" x 1". I'm guessing this works just like regular hard maple? My plan was to cut this into three 13" x 1.6" strips, and have one stabilized clear, one black, and maybe one red? Are there colors that work particularly well with birdseye maple? I assume K&G can handle 13" long pieces of wood? The longest piece I've sent in the past was only 6", lol. Do you think this has enough eyes to even bother with?

Pau ferro. This is the piece of wood that caught my eye. It measures 38" x 5" x .9" (only about half is pictured). I had a brainfart and actually thought this was honduran rosewood when I bought it (they called it bolivian rosewood), lol! Whatever... I think it looks nice, and it should make for some durable handles. I was just going to cut it up into 1.6" x 5.5" blocks and treat it like the dalbergia species (unstabilized and lots of protective equipment when working with it).

Ok. Now the tricky stuff.


Big leaf maple. 6" x 5" x 9" tall. I've never worked with this before. It seems really soft. I'm guessing if box elder is ok stabilized, this will be just fine though.

My plan was to cut a small slice off the top of the spikey burls to see what is under it. If there are a ton of eyes, I'd slice from the top of the burl, down. If it looks boring under the burl, I would cut blocks from the side that is pictured (if that makes sense?).

I was going to leave some clear, dye some brown, some black, and maybe teal?? I was thinking about double dying some... Are there any combinations that look really snazzy together?

Box elder burl. 12" long x 7" wide side (3" narrow side) x 2" thick. I've worked with this before. I was just going to cut it into five or six standard sized blocks using the figure you can see from the side. Should I be checking to see what is under the gnarly burl? I was going to dye some this time. Maybe red?

Unidentified burl. 10" x 6" x 2.5" thick. I'm guessing this is some kind of maple burl by the looks of it. Again... Should I be cutting a slab off the spikey burl to see what is under there? I'm guessing the "eyes" in burls comes from those spikes?

And last... A nice 12" x 11" x 2" slice of redwood. There is some burl hiding in there too. Any suggestions on how to cut this thing? I'm guessing there probably isn't a lot of usable material in here, but who knows.

Sorry, that was a lot! Thanks for the help and have a great night!

 

[Ken H>]

Lucky you - that's some NICE wood.

 

[C_Claycomb]

If it was me, I would not be getting that first piece of birdseye hard maple stabilised. In fact, I would not want to use it for knife handles, but that is separate. First off, hard maple is good for oil finishing for handles. This gives the option of a light colour handle that is reasonably durable but much lighter weight than any stabilised wood or man made material. Second factor is that I don't think that the figure in that piece is dense enough to make it really good for handles and certainly not good enough to spend the money on stabilising. In contrast, I think the pattern would be great for making boxes, trays or display stands.

I would also probably not bother to try to get stabilised knife parts out of the redwood. I have had redwood and while it can have lovely pattern, it is best cut quarter sawn. The piece you have is so short that you cannot get anything along the grain, so what you see on the end is what you will get, and for a knife it looks like there isn't much there. Also, although K&G can do redwood, it will be lighter and less resin dense than the maples. In some cases it may almost feel like it isn't treated...bringing it up to the hardness of walnut or medium maple.

Don't do what I have done, and cut for max yield of blocks. Cut for quality. I had a lot of spalting soft maple and started by making the mistake of cutting for quantity and wound up with a lot of 2nd grade blocks. The advice I got here was good, to send the 2nd grade stuff for dying. Some looks really good like that, but I think it would still have been better to be more careful and demanding about the quality I was cutting.

Chris

 

[C_Claycomb]

Have you heard of Goby Walnut?

The other place that I have bought wood from was Gilmer Wood. The latter shows birds eye maple that has the kind of pattern density that would be worth putting on a knife.

 

[Greenberg Woods]

If you want to show the strongest burl figure, you should cut your blocks orthoganal to the plane of the pins.

Put another way, those pins ARE the eyes. If you imagine the pins as a series of cones, you can clice the cone from tip to flat, and the cross section will be triangles. That is ray/ curly figured burl. Or, you can slice the pins so the cross section is a circle. Those circles will be eye figure burl, which is what i think you are looking for.

 

[Fixall]

If it was me, I would not be getting that first piece of birdseye hard maple stabilised. In fact, I would not want to use it for knife handles, but that is separate. First off, hard maple is good for oil finishing for handles. This gives the option of a light colour handle that is reasonably durable but much lighter weight than any stabilised wood or man made material. Second factor is that I don't think that the figure in that piece is dense enough to make it really good for handles and certainly not good enough to spend the money on stabilising. In contrast, I think the pattern would be great for making boxes, trays or display stands.

I would also probably not bother to try to get stabilised knife parts out of the redwood. I have had redwood and while it can have lovely pattern, it is best cut quarter sawn. The piece you have is so short that you cannot get anything along the grain, so what you see on the end is what you will get, and for a knife it looks like there isn't much there. Also, although K&G can do redwood, it will be lighter and less resin dense than the maples. In some cases it may almost feel like it isn't treated...bringing it up to the hardness of walnut or medium maple.

Don't do what I have done, and cut for max yield of blocks. Cut for quality. I had a lot of spalting soft maple and started by making the mistake of cutting for quantity and wound up with a lot of 2nd grade blocks. The advice I got here was good, to send the 2nd grade stuff for dying. Some looks really good like that, but I think it would still have been better to be more careful and demanding about the quality I was cutting.

Chris

I kind of had that thought myself... That the birdseye pattern wasn't dense enough to really pop on a knife. Although, I do have to say that the pattern on this maple is actually denser than what is on my birdseye Chaparral, lol.

A made a thin slice along the edge of the redwood just to see what was in there. It doesn't look super dense, but it looks like there is at least something there. Probably nothing good enough for a knife though. I think I'll still slab it up to see what I can find. With what I paid, it'll be no real loss, and I don't really have any other use for it.

I'll take that advice about cutting for quality. I was actually already thinking about how I could get the most blocks out of the box elder burl. I re-think that idea, lol. Thanks!


Nah, I've not heard of goby walnut. Gilmer Wood isn't too far away from me though. I'd love to make trip there sometime.

 

[Fixall]

If you want to show the strongest burl figure, you should cut your blocks orthoganal to the plane of the pins.

Put another way, those pins ARE the eyes. If you imagine the pins as a series of cones, you can clice the cone from tip to flat, and the cross section will be triangles. That is ray/ curly figured burl. Or, you can slice the pins so the cross section is a circle. Those circles will be eye figure burl, which is what i think you are looking for.

Oof. You just brought back memories of linear algebra, so thanks for that.

Understood. So I'll want the areas just underneath all of the pokey burl to be the face of the blocks. I think I'm good to go on cutting the maple and the box elder.

Like this:

Rather than like this:

I'm having a hard time picturing where from the burl/tree the slab of redwood came from though. I cut two thin slices and the one that was nearer the center of the slab had way more eyes to it. Shouldn't the majority of the eyes be concentrated around the edges, rather than the center?

 

[Fixall]

You're definitely right on the redwood burl (no surprise there, lol).

I cut around the edges to clean up the bad cracks and bark. Not much under there.

It didn't look very promising, so I just cut it up real quick on the bandsaw. Meh. Out of the entire slab, this was the best looking stuff, lol. They're about 2" x 3" x 2". If I stabilize them and use the very best parts... I could mediocrely cover a few slipjoints, lol!

The maple was a LOT more promising, so I broke out the table saw. Yeah, the maple is going to be super nice.