# Got wood?



## RonB (Mar 14, 2019)

I have a ton of various woods. Well, certainly four or five hundred pounds anyway.  (Skip the next paragraph if you have no desire to know the back story.)

In the late '70s and the '80s, I did a lot of wood working. Mostly turned bowls and furniture. When my Dad died, I lost use of the shop, and the tools we had bought went into storage along with local woods I had collected, and exotic woods I had bought. I now have a shop again and recently collected the wood and am starting to move the tools to the new shop. There is waaaay more wood than I remember. 

I want to start making knives -just stock removal for now...

What I would like to know is what of the below listed woods absolutely need to be stabilized, and what shouldn't be. Any other helpful, (or not), comments greatly appreciated. This is a list of what I can remember and/or identify. There is no way I could use all of this wood for knives, and I don't plan on doing that anyway. In no particular order:

Gaboon ebony
Macassar ebony
purpleheart
wenge
tulipwood
Brazilian rosewood
imbuyu
bubinga (enough for several hundred knife scales if I wanted to do that)
Ceylon satinwood (I think it is now illegal to export this wood from Sri Lanka)
padauk
lignum vitae (too hard to work without metal working tools)

maple (wormy - curly - birdeye - spalted - burl (including a number of large whole burls))
spalted elm
walnut
cherry
red oak

Thanx,
Ron


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## Bensbites (Mar 14, 2019)

Don’t stabilize the ebonies or rosewoods. 

Definitely stablize anything spalted. 

Everything else is optional.


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## milkbaby (Mar 14, 2019)

Check out this thread: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/which-woods-would-you-stabilize.647784/

The fourth post is a list of woods that Chuck at Alpha Knife Supply found responded well to stabilizing, had issues with stabilizing, and could not be stabilized. For example, something in cedar keeps the stabilizing resin from polymerizing and ipe was too dense for the resin to penetrate, so those two probably wouldn't be worth trying to stabilize.

Also, it depends on your handle construction. If you plan to do Japanese wa hidden tang style knives with a soft wood dowel construction on the inside, then you can probably get away without stabilizing most of the woods you listed. For a full tang western style handle, the issue is that wood can move more than the metal tang and pins will move which could possibly lead to cracking. I've only made full tang knives, and when I use natural wood, I make sure they've been sitting around long enough to be dry, and then I finish the handle wood by wet sanding an oil-varnish mixture like Watco Tung Oil Finish or Birchwood Casey Tru Oil into the wood so that the sanding dust and oil-varnish fill the grain. Basically similar to what old style gunstock finishing is like.

Some people will say that most burls and spalted woods should be stabilized because otherwise they will be too soft, but that is up to you. Some burls like desert ironwood burl or honduran rosewood burl are hard enough on their own (and probably don't take up or let stabilizing resin polymerize due to natural oils within the wood).

Gaboon ebony is known to have possible issues with cracking even when stabilized. I have some that I haven't used yet, but from my research, overheating it during work is one of the sources of cracking. One person said they sanded it with a belt grinder where it looked okay at first but then it was all cracks the next day.


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## Bert2368 (Mar 20, 2019)

If that is true lignum vitae, "Guaiacum officinale, G. sanctum"?

I would dearly love to acquire enough for a few handle scales. 

I have a small mallet which turned out to be made of the Argentine variety. Even this is quite the hard, smooth oily piece of wood. 

I tried to get some lignum vitae off cuts and scraps from a company which makes wooden engineering parts for ships and water handling equipment- But they sell all the waste to companies which extract the chips, sawdust & etc. for raw materials to make "guaifensin" for cough syrup, didn't care to divert any to a mere hobby wood worker.


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## RonB (Mar 20, 2019)

Bert2368 said:


> If that is true lignum vitae, "Guaiacum officinale, G. sanctum"?
> 
> I would dearly love to acquire enough for a few handle scales.
> 
> ...



Sorry, but I only have two pieces left. They are the LV used for bearings in stead of steel. After 35 years or so, I don't remember what variety I have.


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## Bert2368 (Mar 20, 2019)

Yes, that sounds like the "real deal", marine and water power bearings are the applications where no synthetics have durability as good as the correct wood (yet).

"Wood, the original fiber reenforced composite material... Accept no substitutes!"

(I like boats where trees are the main raw ingredient. Fiberglass is just a passing fad, right?).


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## milkbaby (Mar 20, 2019)

You should be able to source a small block or even scales of original lignum vitae from a wood retailer. If any question, should ask and verify the species.

If you strike out on that, I know brianhatleberg on ebay usually has it available. I think he charges around $10-15 for a knife block. If you don't see it in his items, you can message him and he can put up a custom listing for you to buy off eBay if he has it in stock.


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