I turned my carver's mallet from farkleberry 29 years ago. Hard, heavy, and very fine grained, it turned beautifully, but developed a crack within the first month. The crack aside, it has held up better than I have and will undoubtedly outlast me.
Would these pieces be too small? Sorry for the bad pics, the ruler is 6" for scale. I have a 45" long piece with some checks and a foot long crack. If you can use it you're welcome to it for whatever it costs to ship it.
I agree. If i'm going to live with an antique i don't mind the scuffs and dings but i don't want the dirt that obscures the original beauty. And who knows what got spilled or splashed on it long ago to make that "patina"?
I haven't used my Biltmore stick since the late 80s. This thread made me dig it out. Looking it over I"m not sure I remember how it works. Use it or lose it!
Last week my son's dog got the tip of it's tail pinched off. He tried black pepper to stop the bleeding till the vet could stitch it up. It worked with an added benefit - the dog didn't try to lick it off after the first try.
I would get mild skin rashes from African padauk and walnut dust, and my throat would feel constricted when I worked pau ferro and cerajeira. Except for the walnut I won't use the others anymore.
The conditions for bog oak do exist in the piedmont, somewhat. We pulled some white oak beams out of the bottom of my great uncle's pond where they had been soaking in the muddy, stagnant water for more than fifty years. They were black from the iron and tannin reaction and the hewn surface was...
EWP typically grows that way, with branches in whorls around the trunk with clear lengths between the branch clusters. I heard the location of the branch groups represent one year's vertical growth. A Lowes employee told me their pine was Western Sugar Pine.
I had a largish sourwood get uprooted and I made turned parts for three rocking chairs from it. Before that I had only turned carving mallets and mauls for my froe from sourwood so this was a chance to try something different. I cut it in the winter and rived it into oversize blanks the same...