Stabilizing rosewoods

H

Happychicken

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Nov 14, 2018
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So quick question. does stabilization negatively affect the rosewood in any way? Like mess up the color or make it blurry.
Recently I have been sending in wood to get stabilized and some dense stuff at that. I have never seen any negative at all.
Just curious as the Burmese rosewood was expensive and I don’t want to ruin it
Thanks!
 
Why would you want to stabilize good Rosewood? That's considered one of those dense oily woods that do not require stabilzing
 
I would want to stabilize it to decrease the amount of moisture it would take it and give off. I am sure even though it is denser than some other woods it will still move. I would think stabilizing it would help it to not shoring or contract on the knife
I could be wrong though
 
I agree with Ken, it's likely a waste of money stabilizing rosewood. It's a very dense wood that's also very stable with little shrinkage and expansion. There's enough oil and resin naturally occurring in the wood that I doubt much stabilizing mixture would work its way in.

Eric
 
I've made several hundred knives with different rosewoods. Have not seen any reason to stabilize any of the rosewoods I've used. Honestly, I would question how effective the process would be. Dang I was just typing that and ea42 ea42 beat me to it!
 
Horsewright said:
I've made several hundred knives with different rosewoods. Have not seen any reason to stabilize any of the rosewoods I've used. Honestly, I would question how effective the process would be. Dang I was just typing that and ea42 ea42 beat me to it!
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"Great minds..." Dave! 😁 😁


Eric
 
I've seen it tried and I've tried a few times. The weight gain is minimal, amd I didn't notice any other properties changes.

Stabilizing wood is done to achieve density, Hardness, and Stability.

Rosewood is dense, hard and stable when properly dried. The properties we desire are already the natural properties of rosewood. In a lot of ways we are trying to stabilize wood to get it to act more like rosewood.

In my opinion, rosewood and gidgee are the 2 mechanically ideal natural woods. High density, great dimensional Stability, easy to dry without inducing stress cracks, and beautiful.

IMO ebony and snakewood are examples of dense woods that pose difficulties, but I think it's a mistake to think that they are easy to fix with Stabilizing. Snakewood and ebony are prone to checking and cracking, but it's mostly an issue of drying, not of application.
 
You're right - while I do like Snakewood, I no longer use it because of the cracking problems that tend to turn up down the road. Ebony is in the same boat - I like African Blackwood, same black color (in some pieces), dense and doesn't seem to crack as bad as Ebony.
 
Rosewood is so stable it is used by luthiers in high-end instrument making (guitars).
 
Ken H> said:
You're right - while I do like Snakewood, I no longer use it because of the cracking problems that tend to turn up down the road. Ebony is in the same boat - I like African Blackwood, same black color (in some pieces), dense and doesn't seem to crack as bad as Ebony.
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African blackwood is a rosewood, and has all the properties of a rosewood.

Ebony CAN be very stable. But it must be dried with utter care to prevent the formation of small cracks and checks which act as propagation sites for further cracks.
 
Thanks Ben for the African Blackwood info being a rosewood. I guess that's why I've had good luck with the blackwood, works just like Rosewood. I've been working with Rosewood since '92 while living in Guatemala while remodeling the boat. I've always like Rosewood since then. Sometimes a plank would be mostly red heartwood, but with some white sap wood giving a nice piece of wood that's red with some while strips around the edge.
 
That's a better question for Ben, but the sapwood has always been good and never gave any problems. I wouldn't think it's quite as dense, and doesn't seem as oily has the heartwood. But still good wood - I need to look for a piece of white sapwood and see if it sinks in water like the heartwood does.
 
Ben Thomas said:
With rosewoods, is the sapwood as stable as the heartwood?
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Its not as dense, but its similar. The grain structure of the heartwood and sapwood is identical. Sapwood turns into heartwood which is more or less dead wood. The grain itself is identical between the two.

The reason they look so different, and that almost all woods sapwood looks the same is that sapwood is almost pure lignin and Cellulose, the glue and fiber of plans respectively. as the tree ages and grows, a wide mix of compounds known as heartwood extracts are deposited into the wood. These contain colors, aromatic molecules, diffrent polyphenols which can further crosslink with lignin and strength the wood and other compounds. That is what separates heart and sapwood, but the grain structures themselves are identical.
 
I'll look forward to Ben's response, but that's the guide I've always used. Some woods that don't sink work just fine without stabilizing, but if it sinks I've never thought about it needing to be stabilized.
 
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Here is some info I wrote about stabilizing. While maybe a good rule of thumb, few woods NEED stabilizing.

Walnut, maple, ash, hickory and oak have been used as tool and knife handles for thousands of years just fine. Especially for figured wood, there's a lot of advantages to stabilizing. The wood finishes better, resists water better, resists scuffing better and the like. That doesn't make it REQUIRED.

Woods like buckeye, redwood, spalted woods absolutely do need stabilizing to be used on a knife and stand up to wear and use.

In the end it's up to personal choice, I reccomend considering the properties of the wood, and the properties you want rather than following and species specific rules.
 
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