Thread: Assorted Woods

Since I am going to begin my adventure into scale making this winter, I was wondering if anyone has any woods that they:

A: Really like (I'm a big wenge fan)

B: Really hate (I think leopard wood looks like absolute rubbish)

Any input from the pros on what woods work really well for scales and/or what woods work not so well?

I don't know much about this but I'd like to know since I'm going to be getting some wood soon. I'm in MI at the in-laws house and my father-in-law has a large stock of cut trees from his property that include: cherry, maple, walnut, and black walnut.

At some point we're going to cut some blocks of heartwood out of each of those to see if they'll work. It'd be good to know if any are hard to work with or really nice to work with.

None are fancy like the leopard woods and other such things I see some people use but I like the look of some of them, myself.

Here is a useful post on safety in working with exotic woods from the archive. Follow the link in the post and you'll find a list of many woods and what to look out for. This is something important to take into consideration as you begin your new scale making pursuit. Work safe and you'll be glad you did.

Edit ; Some woods I have on razors I've bought that I think are very beautiful are bocote, spalted maple and birdseye maple.

I made my only pair of scales from African blackwood. It is the wood woodwind instruments are made of. It is super dense, very hard and toxic but beautiful. It felt like working with hard plastic. AFAIK it resists wear and humidity pretty well and so I only used wax for finish.

Try this link

www.bellforestproducts.com

This is who I use and they are some very nice guys with great Customer Service....

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Try this link

www.bellforestproducts.com

This is who I use and they are some very nice guys with great Customer Service....

Thanks Glen, I've actually been emailing them back and forth all week, Eric is super helpful, and very understanding that I have no idea what I'm doing.

Has anyone used canarywood? I'm thinking of making some Wenge scales (in the manner of the ones you posted on TSD Glen) with a canarywood wedge. I think one standard board of wenge and a small piece of canarywood ought to be enough to give me room for an error or two...

I order the 1.5x1.5x6 blocks and cut them down
or the 1x1x12 hobby wood and cut them down

The canary wood is very light weight BTW just keep that in mind

I have gone to Rockler and in their back room they have a big wooden tub that is filled with end cuts and small pieces of woods. I picked up some Jatoba, Lacewood, Kempas and Cocobolo. Some of the boards were 1"X12X16-18" in length. I ripped them down to 2 1/4" and then re-sawed it to 5/32". I picked up all of that wood for less than $20.00 and most of it was the big size. They had a lot of wood Ebony, Pink Ivory, Purple Heart and Paduk. I didn't spend a lot of time digging way down deep but I'm sure if I did I would of found more. Oh, I even picked up some 1X6 Birds Eye Maple and some rough Curly Maple too.

I'm a huge fan of claro walnut, and many varieties of figured maple (flamed, tiger, angelstep, quilted... any of them but birdseye really).

I don't really care much for the look of pupleheart, but that's just my preferrence.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that some woods are really frail and may need stabilization and/or a liner material. woods such as spalted woods, some burls (like redwood burl), Limba... any really lightweight woods.

I really like the Lacewood, Cocobola, Purple Heart and even some of the nice Olivewoods I have seen lately. Some of the Bocote that is heavily grained is nice too. Ebony is always nice. Some of the local shops have slabs cut in 1/8 inch sometimes too.

Lynn