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This should not be possible, black walnut burl end grain cut scales
My father has been a wood worker for years. After retiring from the police department he has spent most of his retirement working wood. Being his son, I picked up a thing or two myself. In the scrap lumber box I found a hunk of quarter sawn black walnut burl that had been discarded from another project. It was an absolutely stunning piece of wood stock. The problem is that it was quarter sawn and end grain. If you have ever worked wood then you know how picky burl can be.
Its beauty is driven by the uneven, disordered growth of the wood. That uneven growth creates a very unique figuring in the wood and creates a 3-D, deep sheen look in the wood. it also makes the wood hard to work, it is brittle and if you look at it wrong it will crack and chunk while working with it. Combine that with an end grain cut and you have a sliver of wood that will break if you look at it wrong or breathe on it hard.
So of course I decided to make a set of ‘special’ scales from it. Dad kept telling me there was no way it would hold up. At less than 1/8 inch thick, more like 2/16 inch thick, it is incredibly fragile and flimsy. So I have been slowly working this over the past few weeks between other scale jobs. Tonight, I finished sanding and poured the epoxy resin finish. I also just finished making a new scale finishing station.
I am counting on the resin impregnating the end grain pours and adding extra reinforcement to the scales. That should make them durable enough to use. I have an 8/8 Henckels Spanish point scallop backed highly polished (or it will be soon) blade to put in them.
So here they are, freshly mounted and tack cloth wiped on the finishing station and the freshly poured resin finish. It is only moments old and the depth and color will deepen over the next day. In another 4 days they will be ready to remove and finish the backs. Then I can mount the blade. I am thinking of using a bloodwood wedge. A nice, deep red wedge to accent the dark walnut should be nice.
So check back in a few days and see if the end grain cut burl scale project worked, or if I ended up spending days working on a pretty set of door shims.
