Arizona Ironwood

[On Edge]

I'm sure it's Arizona Ironwood, as advertised. It's just not as dark a specimen as what we have come to assume is the norm. Some woods are very consistent in color, others are not. Ironwood appears to fall in the later category. Take a look at some of the items shown here.

I have actually purchased from these folks, and had some Ironwood Burl scales put on a Kopa (by TonyDaHose), and it came out very nice.

I also have a nice fixed blade made by BRKT with Ironwood Burl handles. As Deacon says, color(s) can vary greatly, but if you stick with the burl variants, it is almost always beautiful ...

~ Edge

[buckthorn]

There are several (at least) woods called "ironwood". Another is eastern hophornbeam (Ostrya virginiana). It can almost passs for maple in color and general appearance and idiosyncratic areas of the tree can have strong localized figure.

There are many small species that yield reasonably beautiful wood with pieces large enough for knife scales. The problem is finding sections that are both attractive and can be expected to be reasonably stable after the moisture content has been properly reduced. There are procedures that will make this more likely to be successful but it's more involved than there's room for here. On the other hand, proper drying is not terribly difficult and it's very satisfactory to use wood that is special to you because of where the tree has grown or for some other reason.

[phillipsted]

This is a common problem with any of the dense, oily woods - the oil tends to liquify and burn if you heat them up on a high speed cutting or sanding tool (like a Dremel or many bench sanders). Personally, I cut the scales to size with a hack saw, then use a set of Japanese carving files to shape them, and a set of cross-cut files to trim them out. Then I hand sand to the final size and polish down to 1500 grit. Be careful with rouge on polishing wheels - it can get stuck in the grain of these woods and is impossible to remove - you should put a coat of sealer on before you do any buffing with compounds.

TedP

Iwasaki Carving Files

[kbuzbee]

Be careful with rouge on polishing wheels - it can get stuck in the grain of these woods and is impossible to remove - you should put a coat of sealer on before you do any buffing with compounds.

Appreciate that. I probably would have done that!

Appreciate the link to the files too.

Files and sanding blocks would definitely work, but would take longer.

Thanks Paul. Sounds like my speed

Ken

[lambertiana]

I'm not sure how much faith to put into commercial Janka ratings. Cocobolo rates around 1100 on lists I've seen, but every piece of cocobolo I've worked with was as hard as any ebony or lignum vitae I've used. I'm sure there are wide variations by species, tree-to-tree, and even within the tree itself (heartwood vs sapwood). So don't put too much faith into these ratings...

Lignum Vitae is really tough, dense oily stuff though. Same with Ironwood and most cocobolo.

TedP

Janka hardness measures hardness only. It is the pounds force required to push a .444" steel ball to half of its diameter into the wood. How the wood resists abrasion and cutting is a different matter.

When my brother had Ray Laconico make a couple fixed blades with desert ironwood handles (from scales that I had) he had problems with the wood being so oily that the sawdust gummed up his belts. I have seen similar behavior with cocobolo; one time I was cutting scales from cocobolo and macassar ebony at the same time, and, while the macassar left fine dry sawdust, the cocobolo sawdust was all clumped together with the oil. And the cocobolo was noticeably easier to cut with a bandsaw.

Same goes for Lignum Vitae, I cut some scales from a block and found the wood quite interesting, very oily. Lignum is in a class by itself, in addition to being very hard (janka hardness 4500) it is very tough. It has been used for bearings - in fact, if you visit the WWII submarine Pampanito that is docked at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, the propeller shaft bearings were made from lignum vitae.