Using Birch Burr?

C_Claycomb

C_Claycomb

Joined
Dec 11, 2000
Messages
1,081
Just wondering if regular (not arctic) birch burr was worth trying to use as a handle material. The local forest has a lot of blown down birch trees, many with burrs up to 1/2 football size. I just don't know whether, when eventually the things season, they would be any good for handles.

Any thoughts? I just haven't seen this material used, is there a glaringly good reason not to use it?

Thanks

Chris
 
It can be stunning. Never discount anything for knife handles. One of my favorites is Black Gum that has been down for about a year. The outside gets rotten looking and the inside starts getting pithy but if you stabalize it you come up with the most beautiful grain with black stripes you've ever seen. ;)
 
Thanks for the answers. I did cut into one and it did look pretty nice, but I had not heard people talki about using it, and I wasn't sure if there was a reason.

Stabalising isn't really an option since there aren't any places doing it, that I know of, in Britain. The cost of shipping wood to the US, then back here makes it really uneconomical, might as well buy ready treated wood direct. I am wondering about getting some ultra-low viscosity epoxy wood treatment and using that, heard about the stuff on this forum, think that there was a company web page.

Peter, I am glad that I am not the only one who wanders around the forest looking at trees with the quality of their wood in mind!

Thanks again

Chris
 
Chris, I do all my own stabilizing. It is not quite as good as the commercial companies but works fine. There is a ton of information here on the subject. Just do a search and you will find hours of reading.
 
I have used it on alot of knives in "the early days"....just soak it is Dansihoil or Linseedoil....It can be VERY nice...
 
Jens, can you give some details about your "Rockclimbers Rescue Tool"....Looks interesting!
 
There was a discussion some time ago about this design..check these links..
here
and here


I do not offer the original design anymore as I have changed the design to fit my way of doing things these days. See the picture below for the current version.....It is more a collectors item than anything else...even though I know of at least one guy who carry it in his front pocket! How about that for an EDC...!:D

rap1mel.jpg
 
Since this post started talking about similar woods for handles I have one for you. I live in north-east PA and have a friend that says he has ironwood trees on his property. I know you can use anything for handles but has anyone tried this and is it at all similar to desert ironwood?

J.
www.mountainhollow.net
 
J, no, Desert Ironwood,aka, Olneya Tesota, only grows in the Sonoran desert. That would constitute, southern AZ, s/e CA, s/w NM, northern Mexico.
It is probably a local hardwood that has been nicknamed "ironwood". Most states have something similarly named, although not really ironwood.
 
J, we had a thread on the same subject a month or so ago. I'm on the east coast also and have "Ironwood trees" These are Hornbeam. They are very hard and strong but very plain. They don't make very pretty handles but are tough. They are a lot different from the Desert Ironwood.
 
Mike nailed it J. The gorgeous stuff we all love is from the Sonoran Desert. Each region of the US seems to have a wood that they refer to as ironwood. Being a southern boy, I'm not familiar with all the dense hardwoods in the north, but I suspect that the trees your friend has may be Hornbeam or Hop Hornbeam, which is one of the many woods called ironwood by locals.

I was sent a board of this stuff a few years ago, and while it seemed dense enough, it was a sort of blond wood with little or no figure. I don't recall if the wood came specifically from PA, but I believe it was at least from that general region. I used it exactly once. Because the wood was so plain, I stained and sealed it, and the end result was a handle that looked like ... well, a piece of stained wood. It had no visual excitement at all.

Now regarding Birch Burl, I've seen some drop dead gorgeous pieces of that, but have never used it.

######
Oops! I just realized that Peter and I were responding at the same time.
 
One of my knife maker friends uses a lot of birch burl on hunters fighters and bowies. It is a beautiful material and he does a great job with it.He has a very simple way of using it and has not seen a problem with it following deliveries. He takes the burls-he also uses alder by the way-dries them slowly with only 5 or 10 seconds in the microwave on defrost. He does this several times leting them cool of in between. Often the wood -he uses oversize blocks by the way- will show depressions on each end where the cells have collapsed. When the wood is finished down super fine he uses leather dye and then gives several coats of teak or furniture finishing oil, warming the handle after each application so that the oil will soak in. What he ends up with is a super looking handle! Just one way to finish some very pretty wood. Frank Niro.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top