So as promised here we are another month later with a peek into my wood stash. I chose this month’s piece because I think I know what to do with it and wanted to share it before it becomes something else. As some of you may remember from one of my earlier posts, The Pack Rat Exposed, my father-in-law has an affinity for Lignum Vitae. I confess, that working with this wood was fascinating and I became a little obssessed with it as well. With a specific gravity of 1.05, Lignum will actually sink in water, thus earning it’s nickname Ironwood. This wood grows primarily in Central America and northern South America. The grain is heavily interlocked with very tight rings making this a beast to work with your chisels and planes. In my short experience with it I have found it to turn extraordinarily well and will polish up nicely.
So if we dig through the turning stash we come up with this beauty:
This piece of Lignum has that beautiful green cast to it and wonderful straight grain. Take a look at the end grain and you can see how tightly interlocked it is.
So my thoughts since I am just discovering carving are to turn this into a carver’s mallet. The blank is 3 inches square and 16 inches long. I would love to hear any other ideas about this beautiful piece, but if there are no disagreements then I will look to make this mallet sometime in the next month. So until the next “Hoard” installment, let me hear what’s in your wood pile.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Vic // Jul 17, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Shannon,
I have a friend in North Bend, WA that made his whole deck (a huge deck) out of Ironwood. It was held up in customs forever. If I’m right, there is a lot of silica in the wood, ergo the quick dulling effect on tools.
As far as my own stash. I have a bunch of really old red fir that was reclaimed from a barn in Eastern Oregon. I plan on using it for making my version of the Roubo bench from Chris Schwarz’ book. I have two huge maple burls, a good amount of air dried black walnut, and really wide tamarack, known in the east as beech (a needle tree that loses its needle every years), from an auction I went to last year. I haven’t yet figured out projects for any of the auction wood.
2 David // Jul 18, 2008 at 12:45 am
Shannon -
That is a beautiful piece from your stash. I bet it is hard on your edge tools! I think a mallet is a perfect project. I suspect it will last for generations! Looking forward to your next installment.
3 Joey // Jul 19, 2008 at 2:21 am
That looks like it would make a couple of nice mallets maybe a large and a smaller one with a contrasting handle. nothing better than making your tools what ever you decide I hope you post the process so we and can share in the joy.
Joey
http://sleepydogwoodworking.blogspot.com/
4 A sturdy mallet for my new carving obsession… // Aug 15, 2008 at 5:06 pm
[...] last month in my Tales from the Hoard post I highlighted a chunk of Lignum Vitae. After my recent foray into carving I decided to put that [...]
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