Stocking New woods, What do you want to see?

Greenberg Woods

Greenberg Woods

Joined
Dec 27, 2013
Messages
2,696
Hey guys, im starting to put together my orders for the coming holiday season, and I want to know what you guys are interested in.

Since I am a college student, I buy wood during the year and mill it up at home during my breaks. So I want to know what kind of wood you guys would like, and that way I can buy accordingly.

Im of course going to stock classic woods like cocobolo, Figured maple and figured walnut, but what else do you guys like? I recently began offering more high end woods like rosewood burl and ambonya along with goldfields burls and there was not a lot of movement. Some people seem to like the idea of Osage Orange. So i guess my major questions are

1. What are their favorite woods?
2. What woods are hard to find?
3. What woods can't you find?
4. What wood would you like me to carry?

Let me know and I hope I can meet your needs!

Ben Greenberg
Greenberg Woods
 
Ben, I gotta be honest with you. You know how I love rosewood and amboyna burl, but I must say that I am not inclined to ever buy any wood of that type with sapwood in it. I know that some people like the "contrast" but i am not one of those guys. :o Now that I have gotten that out of my system, I would say that the cocobolo and other non-burl rosewoods will always be good as long as they have decent color (translated reddish) and some halfway decent figure. Ask ar as what we can't find, rosewoods of any type seem to be in short supply, even the East Indian tea plantation wood. "Instrument" grade backwood also always seems to be hard to get.
 
jdm61 said:
Ben, I gotta be honest with you. You know how I love rosewood and amboyna burl, but I must say that I am not inclined to ever buy any wood of that type with sapwood in it. I know that some people like the "contrast" but i am not one of those guys. :o Now that I have gotten that out of my system, I would say that the cocobolo and other non-burl rosewoods will always be good as long as they have decent color (translated reddish) and some halfway decent figure. Ask ar as what we can't find, rosewoods of any type seem to be in short supply, even the East Indian tea plantation wood. "Instrument" grade backwood also always seems to be hard to get.
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Ive got a good sized stash of clean rosewoods. i've been sitting on but havent milled up. Lots of kingwood, Blood red Guatemalan Cocobolo and some clean lengths of tulipwood.
 
My go to request is figured sapele or mahogany. I've looked through your site, and plan to buy in future. I'm pretty stocked up with handle material right now, but if you get the above woods, I'm buying. :thumbup:

Good sized piece of African Blackwood are missing from my collection too.
 
Willie71 said:
My go to request is figured sapele or mahogany. I've looked through your site, and plan to buy in future. I'm pretty stocked up with handle material right now, but if you get the above woods, I'm buying. :thumbup:

Good sized piece of African Blackwood are missing from my collection too.
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Ive been looking into it. The issue with that is that those are two of guitar makes FAVORITE woods. The prices get driven up so far i feel like I would have margins too tight.

I just brought in some AFrican Blackwood in Wa handle sizes, still have to polish it up though.
 
My other big question is what price range do you like?

I tried offering cocobolo, stabilzed maple and walnut and bocote in the 10-15 dollar range and got ZERO interest. 5 weeks and not a single sale on it.

so do you like 20-30
30-40
40-50
50-60 60+?

What range do you find you tend to spend on a block of wood.
 
My favorite woods are koa and desert ironwood. Price depends on the size. If it's something like 6"x2"x.3" scales, I can often get two whole knives out of the pieces and would spend up to $50. However, if I can only get one knife out of it, I don't like spending much more than $35 unless it's a super nice grain and I know a customer would be willing to spend the extra for it.
 
I actually just took my first toe dip into koa with 15 blocks of exhibition grade I have to get stabilized. I'm looking into stocking less insane grades of koa with a hopeful price point of 35-50 dollars a block
 
Beautiful stabilised spalted birch or maple
Yellow/golden wood with a lot of black lines
 
Here are some that I prefer to use, that I've not seen you carry yet. All stabilized by K&G.

Thuya Burl
Black Ash Burl
Red Mallee Burl
Maidou Burl
Box Elder Burl (Yellow Dyed)
Madrone Burl

I generally buy in bulk once a year from a good supplier, but may be tempted to throw you some of my business if you carried any of these at competitive pricing. I never pay more than $40 per block and often less.
 
Buckeye burl, desert ironwood, bog oak, amboyna, maple burl, redwood burl, and koa are some of my go to that look great on just about any knife. I am not a fan of any dyed woods. For highly figured woods I am willing to pay up to $50-60 for highly figured blocks in the 5"x1.5"x1.5" sizes.

I also think there is a huge opportunity in horn material that I cant seem to find a reliable source for. Any type of stag roll/spike is very hard for me to find in high quality and is one of my favorite handle materials of all time. Other horn like buffalo and sheep horn would be awesome to see. I make frontier period style knives a lot and so these materials are very important for me but I cant ever find anyone who I trust to stock them.

You might already do this but listing G10 sheet and pin material on your site could drive some extra sales since I am already shopping for handle material, might as well pick up some of the other hardware I might need while I am there.

Do you have a mailing list? I get emails around once a week from other suppliers with their new inventory and I always end up buying something.
 
The price point of my knives makes it tough to pay $50 for handle material. I try to stay around $20-25. As far as woods I really like koa, claro walnut and maybe some darker Curley maple.
 
Ben, I've been a fan of your site and wood sales, but have not ordered anything yet. I've got a stockpile of Black Walnut, Rosewood, & Bacote woods I've accumulated over the years. As a general rule, I tend to order wood as a "spur of moment" purchase, and those are in the budget price ranges.

I REALLY REALLY like your "how to finish" info on the woods.

I do agree with the idea of having handle hardware on the site also - might just generate a few sales.

Ken H>
 
Ken H> said:
I REALLY REALLY like your "how to finish" info on the woods.

>
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I just noticed this and I completely agree! I have worked with so many different woods and sometimes I might get turned off from a particular wood because I didnt finish it right. This is an awesome thing to post up and helps you because it makes it more likely the wood will finish out well and make someone want to order more. Great idea.
 
Buckeye burl, curly koa, desert ironwood, and bog oak are what I've been looking for.

Oh, also, I'm on your e-mail subscription list, but it doesn't give a link to go straight to your site on the e-mail. It'd be much easier to just click a link rather than having to go to the site manually.
 
Stabilized wood is a must for me--I've had enough issue with using non-stabilized or oily woods to know that I want nothing to do with them anymore. I adore curly Koa and just about anything burl (Redwood, maple, buckeye, etc).

I MUCH prefer pre-cut scales to blocks since almost all the knives I make are small full tangs. Having them cut into scales takes a step out of the process for me and makes my life that much easier. They've gotta be 1/4"+ thick and at least 5x2" so that I can get more than knife out of them.
 
price range- for us guys that make knives in the $200-300 range its nice to find handle material under $20. the woods you offered in the 15-20 dollar range may not have been seen by us lower end makers, because most of your stock is wonderful and higher priced so many of us do not shop there regularly.
question 1) "favorite woods" - ironwood, snakewood, osage, curly maple dyed.
2)"which woods are hard to find" - osage is easy to find, but hard to find with stand-out grain. its usually plain looking
3) "what woods can't you find" -good osage, snakewood & cocobolo. i used to find nice cocobolo with deep maroon /red tones and grain. now its mostly yellow/orange stuff with poor looking grain. good snakewood can be found, but its usually over $40 for nice scales.
4) "what would you like me to carry"- all of the above :)
 
I am also in the group that didn't see your lower priced Cocbolo and such--I am actually looking for Cocobolo right now. Otherwise I'm like Mr. Stark, I really like KOA and Desert Ironwood--but even just average specimens of those two seem to be VERY high in price. I also would recommend carrying all that you can for 'handle' materials, i.e. thong tubes, body tubes, pin material, liner material, corby bolts, small screw standoffs, bolster/guard material--or even pre-made guards and bolsters, etc. I would try to make the minimum purchase pretty small, a lot of guys are just looking for enough stuff to just build a couple knives of a certain type. Also maybe not in your wheelhouse, and I am aware it's labor intensive, but I have become a huge fan of the 'wasted wood' resin/wood combo scales.
 
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