I nearly chose box as well. I have a piece that I have been failing to carve for three years. It just gets harder.
Woods that you love and hate
- Thread starter mrcharly
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I nearly chose box as well. I have a piece that I have been failing to carve for three years. It just gets harder.
Yew is my favourite too by far, beautiful grain and contasting colours.
Least favouite is Blackthorn, mostly due to it's ability to go straight through footwear soles and into my foot.
Least favouite is Blackthorn, mostly due to it's ability to go straight through footwear soles and into my foot.
Thuya - best smelling wood to work by far. I love the smell.
Yew - the dust on my skin is like bad sunburn and it gives me headaches but it's lovely to work.
D.I. stinks and makes great sneezing powder but it's beautiful.
Yellow Poplar and Honoki, great for planing and chiselling long thin curls.
Jarrah, work it wet or blunt your tools. You can't even drive a nail into it.
Yew - the dust on my skin is like bad sunburn and it gives me headaches but it's lovely to work.
D.I. stinks and makes great sneezing powder but it's beautiful.
Yellow Poplar and Honoki, great for planing and chiselling long thin curls.
Jarrah, work it wet or blunt your tools. You can't even drive a nail into it.
blackthorn has wonderful colour in the heart wood, but is made of rock when seasoned and is never straight with lots of knots....
My Dad took a bet that he could make a boat with marine ply, a dory; and he did, and that boat lasted for at least forty years that I last knew of it
M
Just got access to a source of unseasoned holly - about 4" diameter. Any suggestions as to what I could use it for? I believe it was the wood of choice for chess pieces at one time. ( The black pieces were stained with boot polish).Holly….beautiful light coloured wood, and it splits
M
Season it slow and do it cold.
It makes beautiful chessmen or little boxes, or fine fine detailed pieces made up of individual elements, parts of musical instruments and such like. It has a fine smooth grain and can be carved very thin indeed and still be strong……so long as it's seasoned properly. I have a comb made from it, and it's still sound fifteen years after it was carved.
Seal the ends with wax and let it take it's own sweet time.
I'm told though that you can microwave small pieces and that dries them out enough to be carved, but it is small pieces.
It stains though, so don't leave it lying in the wet (it'll turn grey) and be careful with things like dirty hands or oily stuff when you're carving it.
M
It makes beautiful chessmen
or little boxes, or fine fine detailed pieces made up of individual elements, parts of musical instruments and such like. It has a fine smooth grain and can be carved very thin indeed and still be strong……so long as it's seasoned properly. I have a comb made from it, and it's still sound fifteen years after it was carved.Seal the ends with wax and let it take it's own sweet time.
I'm told though that you can microwave small pieces and that dries them out enough to be carved, but it is small pieces.
It stains though, so don't leave it lying in the wet (it'll turn grey) and be careful with things like dirty hands or oily stuff when you're carving it.
M
Use it for anything to do with food and eating; one of the things I find so appealing about it is what folks call "mouth feel". It has a really nice feel to it in contact with lips and tongue and this just keeps getting better. It's also very close-grained and so strong and resilient and doesn't take on stains and odours at all, in my experience.
One of it's traditional uses was as a keel strip along the bottoms of fishing boats that needed pulling up to the tide line as it's very slippery when wet; that's the reason it doesn't get used for tool handles, but this attribute might suggest other things to you?
Cheers Toddy and Macaroon - some good ideas there. I've been doing some clearing and coppicing for the Woodland Trust and had to cut down several holly trees. Seems much too good for firewood.
Willow has a lovely grain, and is very resistant to splitting, so I do like carving it. And round here, it can be had relatively easily as long as you don't want anything too big.
Stripping the willow is enjoyable too...
J
Pine. What can I say? It's a logger's bread and butter. Can be a right hot sticky mess to log it though.
MDF has it's uses and they do several types these days, fire resistant and a virtually waterproof one as opposed to the green moisture resistant one that still swells up in a damp workshop.
Best use of MDF, in my book though, is as a cheap medium for one off jigs to get other work done like these newel caps and balusters:-
Rob.
Best use of MDF, in my book though, is as a cheap medium for one off jigs to get other work done like these newel caps and balusters:-
Rob.
Any wood that is growing healthy And gives LIFE and happiness to beast and man.....an I love ancient upturned root ends especially Oak and Yew that have a character of their own that appears to be spirits of the woods....
One of the many and varied stairs I've made over the last 30yrs but holds a special place in my memory as it was designed by the lady client (an artist) on paper and I had to turn those drawings into CAD drawings to suit the finished floor to 1st floor dimensions (to make jigs etc) then design wall mounted handrailing to suit. When I returned to the house to do some other work her husband told me he loved the stairs as they were the easiest he had ever used, he had suffered from polio as a child so used crutches to get around and the way the wall mounted rails matched the outer rails made his use of the stair less difficult. To have a happy client is great but to actually be told your work has had such an effect is another level.
See what i mean about MDF having its place?
Rob.
MDF has it's uses and they do several types these days, fire resistant and a virtually waterproof one as opposed to the green moisture resistant one that still swells up in a damp workshop.
Best use of MDF, in my book though, is as a cheap medium for one off jigs to get other work done like these newel caps and balusters:-
Rob.
That's some top quality carpentry right their.i'd love too spend a few years under your wing too boost my skills to that level.hats off
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Well here I might find an answer to a question which I've wondered about for well over half a century.
When I was a child we were given a lot of holly sticks each about a metre long, to use on our allotment. Apparently their original use was in making whips, and I remember hearing that holly was the best wood for that use. I've always wondered why.
This is the only reference that I can find:
"A show cane is a short, stiff cane that may be plain, leather covered, or covered with braided leather. Traditional canes are made from a stick of holly, cherry or birch wood, which is dressed and polished. They are rarely used now except in formal show hacking events."
I was going to say cottonwood as a tree with so many uses and virtues, yet also with so many difficulties. I've had trees try to harm me back for cutting them, but that's the only stuff which embroiled me with the tax man. Even so I couldn't hate it.
Red elderberry is a tree like shrub which grows prolifically in wetlands here since it is so toxic that nothing bothers it, except for the white flowers and huge bunches of red berries. Just looking at the stuff close up gives one an eerie feeling caused by the lack of insect nibbling on leaves. It is pretty from a distance, in spring with bunches of white flowers, and in autumn with huge bunches of red berries. A few years ago I juiced some berries in a steam juicer and the resulting wine brought back memories of college in Britain - and just as important didn't sicken me. Then of course I found out about how about 1 in 200 people are sickened by even the prepared berries in wine or jelly, so I quit while I was ahead. I don't even hate devil's club whick has "horridus" as part of its name but I guess I hate red elderberry.
When I was a child we were given a lot of holly sticks each about a metre long, to use on our allotment. Apparently their original use was in making whips, and I remember hearing that holly was the best wood for that use. I've always wondered why.
This is the only reference that I can find:
"A show cane is a short, stiff cane that may be plain, leather covered, or covered with braided leather. Traditional canes are made from a stick of holly, cherry or birch wood, which is dressed and polished. They are rarely used now except in formal show hacking events."
I was going to say cottonwood as a tree with so many uses and virtues, yet also with so many difficulties. I've had trees try to harm me back for cutting them, but that's the only stuff which embroiled me with the tax man. Even so I couldn't hate it.
Red elderberry is a tree like shrub which grows prolifically in wetlands here since it is so toxic that nothing bothers it, except for the white flowers and huge bunches of red berries. Just looking at the stuff close up gives one an eerie feeling caused by the lack of insect nibbling on leaves. It is pretty from a distance, in spring with bunches of white flowers, and in autumn with huge bunches of red berries. A few years ago I juiced some berries in a steam juicer and the resulting wine brought back memories of college in Britain - and just as important didn't sicken me. Then of course I found out about how about 1 in 200 people are sickened by even the prepared berries in wine or jelly, so I quit while I was ahead. I don't even hate devil's club whick has "horridus" as part of its name but I guess I hate red elderberry.
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