All About Pocket Knives

Ironwood comes up from time to time in searches for knife scale materials. Seems like there's a couple of different varieties. It looks like it has some great grain patterns and color.
Has anyone in the forum used this wood for knife scales? If so, what did you think of it?
Thanks.
Jeff

I love it as a material. As the name implies, it's hard, and you can work it hard without fear of it burning on you. It takes a great finish, without any needs to seal pores and grain. Buffs up nice with great pattern.

Thanks Glenn bad! I may have to pick some up and give it a try.
Jeff

On one of your other threads about the Colonial knives, the picture I added of the Hammer Brand cattle knife that I redid from shell handles was done in Ironwood. It is very hard, and one thing I noticed was when sanding the new handle material with the disc sander, I noticed a couple of sparks coming off the WOOD! Then I remembered reading that much of it comes from the desert regions and it grows very slowly because of lack of moisture. And it can pick up bits of silica sand that embeds in the wood and will show as a tiny spark when power sanding. I first thought that the wood had a nail in it, but this isn't necessarily so. It does finish up to a very good looking piece and is very durable.

Desert Ironwood works good, stinks while being ground/sanded, dust is toxic so take precautions, sand to at least 600 grit then buff with white compound, takes a nice shine as Glenn mentioned. I have used a heap of it over the years. Careful when pinning, tends to crack and it doesn't like extreme changes in temp/humidity. Did a queen trapper in the stuff for former forum member El Lobo (R.I.P) in the time it took to fly it from OH to TX (or maybe it was AZ my memory fails) the front handle cracked into 3 pieces

Both of the above posts are absolutely, 100% correct.
The closer to the base of the tree the richer it is in Silica. It is also difficult to finish because even under vacuum it is so dense that the pore structure does not absorb solvents.

Any finish that you apply will be a surface finish (in very good examples) BUT it is a beautiful wood in itself. The closest specimen I can think of is Indonesian Teak.

I mentioned before that if you want some to experiment with (this goes for all the knife makers/mechanics here) I have several hundred board feet of Lyonothamnus floribundus (Catalina ironwood) that is approx. 60 years old.
I have 2"x2" squares about 16' long, and I can/will cut them down to whatever length you want. No charge... Call it paying forward.

Send me a PM or Email with an address, and I'll send what you need. No worries!

Some images from the trunk, and stem wood

Desert ironwood is interesting stuff to work with, you can find pieces of sand embedded in the wood and you can also find voids in the wood. If you have never worked with it before, probably the first thing you’ll notice is the distinctive aroma that it gives off when you sand it or cut it, and aroma I can only describe as Eau de Dirty Diaper. It is really not the most pleasant wood to work with.
On the other hand it can be absolutely gorgeous! I will post a few pictures of some of the knives I have done with desert ironwood. Although the pictures aren’t the best, I did a set of kitchen knives and steak knives for my nephew’s wife.

I got a good deal on some desert ironwood a few years ago at a show and bought about 70 pounds of desert ironwood at the end of the show because the seller didn’t want to carry it back out to his car. If it would’ve been oak or fir wood I would’ve been able to carry it in one armload as if carrying firewood into the house. As it was it took me two trips from the show out to my car with the wood and I think that was with a lightweight handcart to help with the hauling. The stuff is unbelievably heavy!

There are couple of different ways I have finished desert ironwood, one way is just to buff it with a fine abrasive like No Scratch Pink or Jackson’s White and then apply hard carnauba wax with a hard sewn buffing wheel. This was the first method I had used with desert ironwood. The second method I use and the method that I used on the set of kitchen cutlery is to do one or two light coats of thin CA glue. I found Zap-A-Gap thin to be best suited for this because it would soak into the wood rather than hardening on top of the wood like regular CA's. I used a fine ScotchBrite pad between coats. After the second or third (if needed) coat of thin CA I buffed the ironwood with No Scratch Pink and then apply a coat of hard carnauba wax. You can see what the finished ones looks like in the picture of the kitchen knives.

Wow! Pretty stuff! Dale you don't do any thing half way, great lookin' handles!
Treefarmer

I had NO IDEA that CA would come out so beautifully when polished!
Add that to the Data Base, and throw out the Beer Shotgun!

When I bought the wood that I have around 12 years ago (at a STEAL of a price) I had no clue that it weighed as much as it does. It was all dunnage from the loading docks in San Diego that was re-milled, and freighted to me in Florida. I paid more for the shipping than the wood
IronWood actually sinks in water. That is why it is used in cargo ships as a non floating platform in the hull. So I know for a fact that it is (denser/more dense = me?) = Science... E=(Mc/2)

2"x2"x12" is about a pound. Imagine 600 board feet.

My offer is open. I have more than I'll ever use.

Thin CA like Zap-A-Gap Thin (pink label) is great stuff. I usually use it as a base coat before using the regular viscosity CA (green Zap). It acts as a sealer and primer for the heavier CA.

I also use the pink Zap to seal white bone and other light colored bone and ivory before polishing. The CA fills the pores in the ivory and the canals in the bone to prevent the polishing rouge from filling the pores and giving it a dark speckled look.

Dale the handles on those knives are beautiful. I especially like the Schrade. The handles set it off. The more I learn about knives the less I like Delrin and synthetic. All of the lockback Pakistan knives that were made with wooden handles were so ugly and ordinary it eliminated wood from consideration as a handle material. Knives like these and some of the GEC knives have rekindled the beauty of wood in cutlery. Nice work.

I would love to have some of it to make pens from, if you can spare a few pieces, heck I will make you a pen for a box of it. I will share it with some pen turning friends of mine. I love to turn it.

I have turned quite a few pens on the mini lathe using various kinds of woods and have tried CA glue as a final finish on some of them. It does work, but all I can say is you want to be VERY, VERY careful. I had finish sanded the pen with 800 grit and had on a latex glove and was using a piece of a cotton gun cleaning patch to apply the CA. With the lathe spinning, touching the cloth applies the CA as a friction polish and if you let it warm up, the heat seems to set the CA. However, I must have gotten it too warm and the CA flashed, as I saw a puff of what looked like steam come off the spinning pen. Not realizing what was going on, I leaned forward for a better look, and got a whiff of the "steam", which when it does that is actually cyanide gas. One whiff of that gas and it almost overcomes the respiratory system. Granted I have some lung problems (COPD) but I would not want to see anyone have this happen to them. The other thing is that CA is designed as an adhesive, with wood finish being as "off label" use. It would seem to me that over the long term no one really knows how it holds up. Just be careful if you use thin cyanoacrylate glue (Super Glue) as a friction polish on spinning pens! I mostly use Crystal Coat as a friction polish and there are also some very good Australian products in this category.

OLDE CUTLER wrote:I have turned quite a few pens on the mini lathe using various kinds of woods and have tried CA glue as a final finish on some of them. It does work, but all I can say is you want to be VERY, VERY careful. I had finish sanded the pen with 800 grit and had on a latex glove and was using a piece of a cotton gun cleaning patch to apply the CA. With the lathe spinning, touching the cloth applies the CA as a friction polish and if you let it warm up, the heat seems to set the CA. However, I must have gotten it too warm and the CA flashed, as I saw a puff of what looked like steam come off the spinning pen. Not realizing what was going on, I leaned forward for a better look, and got a whiff of the "steam", which when it does that is actually cyanide gas. One whiff of that gas and it almost overcomes the respiratory system. Granted I have some lung problems (COPD) but I would not want to see anyone have this happen to them. The other thing is that CA is designed as an adhesive, with wood finish being as "off label" use. It would seem to me that over the long term no one really knows how it holds up. Just be careful if you use thin cyanoacrylate glue (Super Glue) as a friction polish on spinning pens! I mostly use Crystal Coat as a friction polish and there are also some very good Australian products in this category.

CA also reacts with some forms of cloth causing extreme heat and smoke/steam looking fumes to emit that as you noted are very unpleasant to get a whiff of.

muskrat man wrote: CA also reacts with some forms of cloth causing extreme heat and smoke/steam looking fumes to emit that as you noted are very unpleasant to get a whiff of.

I haven’t experienced any reaction to cloth, but I have had a reaction when I spilt some CA on a plastic cup, it began to melt and smoke. I got it outside posthaste! The smell was not pleasant!

orvet wrote:

muskrat man wrote: CA also reacts with some forms of cloth causing extreme heat and smoke/steam looking fumes to emit that as you noted are very unpleasant to get a whiff of.

I haven’t experienced any reaction to cloth, but I have had a reaction when I spilt some CA on a plastic cup, it began to melt and smoke. I got it outside posthaste! The smell was not pleasant!

I found that one out the hard way, got a couple drops on my britches one day while sitting at the bench, about 3 seconds later felt like I had a hot coal on my leg, it'll burn you quick. Make you do one of these but not in a good way

CA glue is all I use to finish pens with, that and BLO combined together.

americanedgetech wrote:Both of the above posts are absolutely, 100% correct.
The closer to the base of the tree the richer it is in Silica. It is also difficult to finish because even under vacuum it is so dense that the pore structure does not absorb solvents.

Any finish that you apply will be a surface finish (in very good examples) BUT it is a beautiful wood in itself. The closest specimen I can think of is Indonesian Teak.

I mentioned before that if you want some to experiment with (this goes for all the knife makers/mechanics here) I have several hundred board feet of Lyonothamnus floribundus (Catalina ironwood) that is approx. 60 years old.
I have 2"x2" squares about 16' long, and I can/will cut them down to whatever length you want. No charge... Call it paying forward.

Send me a PM or Email with an address, and I'll send what you need. No worries!

Some images from the trunk, and stem wood

E-Mail sent!
Thanks.