What is your favorite piece in your personal stash of handle material?

Burl Source

Burl Source

Joined
Dec 7, 2008
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It seems to be a fairly common trait amongst knife makers to collect handle materials. Exotic wood, Ivory, Pearl, Stag and who knows what else. It doesn't take long before they have accumulated a "Private Stash". But it's not just the knife makers. A lot of the collectors do it as well.

To get to the point of this thread.
If you have your own personal stash of handle material, what is your one favorite piece? (remember, photos or it doesn't exist)
My favorite seems to change fairly often.
This is my current favorite. It is the only piece I have and will be saved to be used on an important knife eventually. Until then I will just take it off the shelf and look at it once in a while. The wood is Rosewood Burl from Belize. I had intended to save a couple blocks for myself but before I knew it this outer piece of the burl is all that was left.

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I don't know if you sent any of that stuff to Belgium in its "raw" state, but you know for sure that some will be going over there as "finished product" come November. :D
Burl Source said:
It seems to be a fairly common trait amongst knife makers to collect handle materials. Exotic wood, Ivory, Pearl, Stag and who knows what else. It doesn't take long before they have accumulated a "Private Stash". But it's not just the knife makers. A lot of the collectors do it as well.

To get to the point of this thread.
If you have your own personal stash of handle material, what is your one favorite piece? (remember, photos or it doesn't exist)
My favorite seems to change fairly often.
This is my current favorite. It is the only piece I have and will be saved to be used on an important knife eventually. Until then I will just take it off the shelf and look at it once in a while. The wood is Rosewood Burl from Belize. I had intended to save a couple blocks for myself but before I knew it this outer piece of the burl is all that was left.

001_zpsf1a912b0.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Some horse chestnut burl and goldlip mop although the mop is inlay size.
Its becoming so hard to find black lip and gold lip in workable size .
I'm looking at minimum $130 + for a full set I think black lip more iirc it takes 10 tons of black lip to find a piece big enough to produce 3"x2"x3mm deep :O .
Sorry I can't post pics just yet :(.
 
Got a piece of bog oak I picked up from you, Mark....right now, just owning a piece of wood 2x as old as Christ is pretty cool, the other is a set of black lip purchased at Blade this is virtually unphotographable.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
for changing its color, its strength, touched nothing better than ironwood desert of Arizona
 
i have a bit of odds and ends but just keep looking for jsut the right project for some of it (it has its own spce in the shop )
 
I have some incredible pieces of artifact walrus ivory with tool marks that would make beautiful little 'neck daggers'... but just haven't pushed the button on them yet. I'm also loving my stash of Lake Superior diver salvaged old growth black oak. It's mineralized and the 'bog oak of North America'. A couple of the boards are quarter sawn. I have quite a bit of that stuff if anybody is interested in scales. I will try to put up some pictures later today...
 
If you are coming to Gembloux, I will show you some of this Belize old growth rosewood burl and you may change your mind. ;) Unfortunately, this stuff is almost impossible to find.
parfums95 said:
for changing its color, its strength, touched nothing better than ironwood desert of Arizona
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I have a variety of personal favorites in my stash. Most of my "good stuff" is sitting on shelves in front of my bench:






However, this piece of B&W striped ebony is probably the gem of the lot:


-Peter
 
I hope the old growth belizean rosewood was harvested responsibly. How was it sourced?
 
brownshoe said:
I hope the old growth belizean rosewood was harvested responsibly. How was it sourced?
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There was a big tree in the park and I gave some guys a half gallon of whiskey to cut it down in the middle of the night. Then they lit the rest of the park on fire to hide the fact that an old tree had been stolen. The only one who got killed was the night watchman because he saw us and would been able to describe us to the police.

Just teasing.
The rosewood was from an old block a woodworker bought in Belize about 20 years ago.
Harvesting burls is a lot different than cutting for lumber.
For lumber they usually just cut all the trees and then mill them.
 
The stuff that I had a couple of years ago came off of a highway project in Belize in the late 90's or early 2000's. I jokingly tell people that they clear cut and burned a swath through the primeval rain forest to get the road into some new ecotourism resort. :D The guys who I got it from have a timber concession, but they had to sit on the rosewood for almost 10 years until the export window opened up. Apparently, it has closed again, so that is why you see the stuff costing so much nowadays. From what I have heard, Belize is better than some other countries when it comes to environmental matters, but because this is Honduran Rosewood, it gets typically regulated based on what is happening everywhere in its range. The quality of the Belize wood that i have sen leads me to believe that it is REAL old growth stuff and it may be like Cuban mahogany in that it only shows up on the market when they absolutely had to cut an old tree down or one got blown over. I have some OLD straight grain guitar parts/custom pool cue quality Brazilian rosewood that has been in the US for 40 years or more and this Belize stuff is a fair bit denser and heavier.
brownshoe said:
I hope the old growth belizean rosewood was harvested responsibly. How was it sourced?
Click to expand...
 
I've had a piece of very curly/figured African Blackwood on "hold" for well over 5 years.
I believe it will be used in a particular set of 5 presentation knives one of these days soon. ;)

The other is one I've recently picked up - a beautiful piece of stabilized Cocobolo Burl.
It just walks and talks all over the bench.

 
jdm61 said:
If you are coming to Gembloux, I will show you some of this Belize old growth rosewood burl and you may change your mind. ;) Unfortunately, this stuff is almost impossible to find.
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yes I am a gembloux I even think that we know, I'm all year
 
Whoever moved this to Shop Talk......really?

Might want to switch to decaf.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
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