Wood and log encyclopedia

Hand carving, that's awesome!
That came out really well for just testing it out, it's a deep black. I'm going to try to make some of this myself.

Sharpening is my number one tip when people ask. Having a good grinder and wheel, but more importantly having the rest/jig set properly and repeatability. Most of my work is segmented which means tons of glue, so I sharpen every ten minutes or so and it makes such a difference. I thought I knew about sharpening knives and tools then took a class specifically for sharpening turning tools and i saw results immediately, and my tools last much longer.

African Blackwood before and after, the Vapcap is lending itself well to custom stems. @VapCap it brings a smile to my face every time I use it. Ingenious.

@phattpiggie wow thats classy looking vapcap!!! Thanks for sharing.

Got hold of some form of mahogany type material, it's more than likely Sapele. Anyways it was a freebie and you never say no to free wood. Do you?
Cut a blank and span it up, so it's not to my taste and it will become one of those 'practice timbers' or 'prove a point woods'. It shall not be used for its calorific value as Mrs.PP would have me do. As much as some days I would appreciate the heat it would give off.


I don't like the finish it gives or the color. I did the RHS groove first then set about a bit of 'ebonizing'. It took a lot of coats to get to this point. Sped the process up with a hot air gun but it was still a long job.

Been carting around quite a bit of parquet flooring for far too long. Teak from a local asylum which closed down many years ago. @Ruta one less bit to move next time.

A quick trip thru the circular saw, a couple of loads in my Blackwood and some time later..

Nice re purposing, one down

Another bit of re-purposing. What do you do when you spot a Tunisian Olivewood Cheese board @Ruta ??

You cut it into blanks and make a Vapcap stem with it.

I will choose another piece at random and see what lies below the surface. The grain pattern on the original board was all over the place, hoping some other nice bits come from it.

phattpiggie said:

Another bit of re-purposing. What do you do when you spot a Tunisian Olivewood Cheese board @Ruta ??

You cut it into blanks and make a Vapcap stem with it.

I will choose another piece at random and see what lies below the surface. The grain pattern on the original board was all over the place, hoping some other nice bits come from it.

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Sweet piece of wood for stems! Love character of that one!

@Buildozer I picked the board with the most character out of half a dozen pieces. I am hoping it will yield some more good looking bits. Won't know until I get into it. Really nice to work with and took very little finishing.

Am I safe in here . . . . ?

Again, not exotic, but the stunning beauty of this maple makes me wanna dance anyway.

Now, this is just between you & me, o.k? So don't go flashing them around to all of your buddies.

Come & get up close & personal with Vyvyan . . . .

@VegNVape that lid is stunning, rbt must have got the maple from snappo! I'm counting the seconds until june and my zion makes it high anticipated arrival. I actually already had ed make me a stem for it. Hopefully I don't hit the refund route I'm only kidding I got faith in that vape.

Thanks for sharing the awesome pictures!!

Bought these today. Ropala Lacewood. Lets see how well they turn up.

Kingwood Zion/EQ


Purpleheart UD



Thuya Burl Solo



Blackwood Haze V3



Buckeye Burl UD





Top to Bottom

Kingwood
Buckeye Burl
Purpleheart
Thuya Burl
Buckeye Burl
Blackwood

Well well lookie lookie, @Philreal187 really like these pics, the purpleheart piece really looks good in this batch bro, well done on the shots!

Thanks @Ed's TnT it was really quite easy, I just had a morning session and let the sun and camera do the rest!! We already know your work speaks for itself
There's a bunch more floating in the celebrate your wood thread I just couldn't help myself

Philreal187 said:

Thanks @Ed's TnT it was really quite easy, I just had a morning session and let the sun and camera do the rest!! We already know your work speaks for itself
There's a bunch more floating in the celebrate your wood thread I just couldn't help myself

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I'll see your stems and raise you a mod! Those are some stunning stems brother!

This gem is obviously from @Snappo's wonderful blanks. This is Spalted Burmese Rosewood Burl that my man Nico from NicoMods made into a killer boxmod.

It's official I can no longer deny it.
Hi, I'm Phattpiggie and I have WAS.


Thuya Burr. Everything crossed I don't find any inclusions.

Phattpiggies adventures in Homegrown Log World.

Spalted beech which looked like it's had suffered a little on the outside and really had a bad time when you see the inside. Practice if nothing else.


A nicer piece of spalted beech without the friends


Which I pushed a little too hard, I heard it clicking and knew it had split. So I parted off the broken bit.

and not to be beaten and because it's just a bit of wood and all adds to the practice I added a piece of sapele, not sure if I like it, @RastaVapa and myself both agreed blackwood rather than the sapele.


Sapele salvaged from a big pile outside a staircase manufacturers, I carried bits of this around for years, this is the last of it, my late father took it up to the Highlands with him one year and then it came back to when I moved all his stuff down with me. 15+ years later. He would not have approved of it's outcome. Me however I love it. Sorry about the focus.

The finial is a piece of the leftover teak @Ruta's VC stem was turned from.

And just for a bit of scale one penny is not far off a one cent coin size. I really wish I had a big block of that same teak.

A couple of before and afters.
Black and white ebony, one of the blanks had a crack appear and no matter how much I tried it never made it. Third one down. To be fair most of the interesting detail disappeared as I turned it.





Also had a bit of time to play with the sapele my lidded log is made from. Apologies for the focus.

A 4 twist VC stem

6 twist log stem after wax has been applied.

Been making square wood round only to make it square again.

Top to bottom Pink Ebony, Lignum Vitae, Zebrano, Lacewood and Lemonwood.


Tulipwood, Striped Ebony, Camphor, Cocobolo and Thuya Burr.

phattpiggie said:

6 twist log stem after wax has been applied.

Click to expand...

Thats a stunner

emmdeemo said:

Thats a stunner

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I like it so much I've never made another, it's Sapele and was on a pile of scrap wood at a staircase manufacturers over 20 years ago. The Homegrown Lidded Log, the Harry Pothead Twist and the Log stem are all from the same piece of wood, it's got an iridescence to it which I never expected to see.

I came across a link to this thread in a @phattpiggie post on the HGL thread.
(Btw, @RastaVapa all the very best mate, wherever you are and whatever you're doing).
Before and after pictures of logs is such a great idea I thought it'd be fun to add some imput and
perhaps even revive the thread.

I've been one of @blokenoname 's students for a few months now and recently managed to produce a working log. I've now made a few pine handrail units but the one shown here is part of my 'rustic' project. The rustic idea is to use blanks from fallen or cutback trees/shrubs. There's plenty of such stuff around where I live and it usually just rots in situ. The drawbacks are considerable but so are the rewards.
Can't tell yet if it will be viable but if it works on just a dozen units I'll be very happy.

Here's the tree. It's a Scots pine that got blown down in the big storm last March.



Despite the needles still being green the tree was certainly dead and the wood had begun drying out.
I took enough for three blanks and here are two of them.



That's a bit of my shadow on them, I think. I'm leaving those cambium residues on as they provide
some visual interest on the otherwise bland exterior.
Here's the one that got turned into the first ever Rustic Log.



There are more pictures of it over on the DIY thread here.

As I mentioned in that post it's got about eight growth rings.
I built it the 'right' way up so that it tapers naturally towards the top of the unit.
And, symbolically, the tree stands again

I'm still working on the best way to dry the blanks. Removing the bark and waxing both ends works for some but my hawthorn and my holly have split already . Gonna try drilling a few out while still green
to see if that works and have a few other ideas to try out.

Anyway, this unit has been my daily driver for nearly two weeks now and it's working fine.

Workmen cleared some Leylandii near here recently so I bagged a couple of log-sized blanks.
Still conifer but denser than this pine and with more detail. Will have a go at one of those next.

Before and after.

Footpath clearance near my home left a couple of lengths of sycamore branch. Top blank
is from the same branch. Slightly damaged but may be ok to use.
Much finer grained than the pine I've been using so far. Finished building this one today.
Was expecting a pale but bland appearance to the wood but it actually has some highly attractive
yellow colouration. Have not entirely succeeded in capturing it in these pictures, tho.



Purely by chance I had some mustard coloured leather for the base.

It tapers gently in section but in profile it's distinctly egg shaped.



This, together with the smoothness of the wood, lends the unit an agreeably satisfying tactile quality.
Growth rings are not as visible as on the pine Rustic in my previous post but one of them is there as a
faint yellow line. Slightly bigger than my others. Height is 10.6cm. The base is 5.2cm at max and 4.6cm at min.

Works fine too .