ucaliptus wood

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Apr 17, 2017
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an elderly lady that i help with yard work has some ucaliptus wood for me do any of yall know how to cure it and is it ok to use for a knife handle. ive tried cypris wood before but it just broke way to esily you could literaly break it between your fingers. is ucaliptus like this or is it harder. and should i use a stain on it or does it look ok by it self
 
Eucalyptus and Cypress ?

In most cases, neither is good for knife handles.

Eucalyptus has many varieties. Many of the Aussie burls used by wood turners and some knifemakers are varieties of eucalyptus. Australian red gum is also eucalyptus, and is used on knives. One problem is that they do not stabilize well, and that is a deal breaker for many knifemakers.

I think the common eucalyptus varieties ( I think the USA only has the common type) are not good for our purposes.
 
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I have a few blocks of Hawaiian eucalyptus that I got from burlsource. They look much like a slightly darker mahogany.
 
Back in my bowl turning days I worked with the eucalyptus that grows in North America. It would be about my last choice for a knife handle. Even cherry or walnut would be miles better. I'd be tempted to pick oak over it.
 
Eucalyptus is a very variable thing. As knife handle material it varies from garbage like Eucalyptus nicholii, to top tier like Eucalyptus camaldulensis and Eucalyptus tereticornis.
Here in Australia even just the spotted gum, red gum, and ironbark decking we can buy from hardware stores make excellent knife handles as they're all hard, stable, rot proof, insect proof, and dense enough to sink in water or close to it.

So it really depends on which species you have. If it seems hard and heavy compared to a piece of white oak it's probably good to use. If it seems lighter or softer than white oak, turn it into coasters.
 
What about bluegum??

Getting firewood over the summer from trees that had beed down for over 2 years so I cut some crotches and have them slabed and sitting in the shed till next summer to soo how they are although I expect they will be dry by then. I had intended to use them for handle scales and while they done have much in the way of colour, they do have a nice grain pattern with the swirls etc from the crotch.
 
If it's the bluegum I'm thinking of, it should be pretty hard.

One other thing I'll add on the eucalyptus in North America is that drying it sucks. I've never gotten a piece of it to dry without cracking and warping. You'll have to let it season for a year or two, and then pick out between the cracks if you want to do something with it.
My usual rule is that any wood I buy (apart from Pao Ferro and Nigerian ebony) sits in the shop for a minimum of a full year before I start using it. Some species like tubi had to sit for 2-3 years before they stopped moving. Not a matter of it being unstable (it's about equivalent to lignum vitae in all aspects) just that it hadn't fully dried and settled down before I picked it up.
 
i think its already seasoned because its dry and cracked already. a lady gave it to me for helping out at a wedding. she was origonally going to burn it but someone told her not to so she gave it to me because she knew i worked with wood. and it really does have a nice grain to it if you ask me. and could yall tell me plainly what the problems are with most ucaliptus wood because im not just trying to find out if this batch of wood is good i also want to learn
 
If you are in the U.S its blue gum. Very hard but has terrible timber properties. IE it cracks like all hell and isnt very stable. Can you use it? Sure. you can put literally anything you want on a knife handle and call it a knife. are there better options? Of course.
 
ok guys i guess ill go back to using my regular wood because it turns out beautifull and i dont know what ill do with this fancy trash lol ive tried to use micarta before i just dont like the looks of it with my type of blades. wood is my best friend
 
my cousin is a botinist and he came to visist me so i asked him about that wood and he says it isnt eucaliptus but it also isnt any good for handles. BUT HE DID SHOW ME SOME TREES IN MY BACK YARD i have chinabery and black cherry and various other trees
 
From a non-craftsman, just a tinkerer, I like the feel of eucalyptus wood and will someday use a chunk of it to hold a Mora blade. It might not succeed, but I'll enjoy the experiment.

Zieg
 
try to give the ends a bit of warm wax before it dries it helps keep the wood from cracking at the ends bind the ends with good wire too and re tighten every now and then---automotive hoseclamps are good too worked for me with other woods
 
I was fortunate with the lot I got as it had been in log form for over two years after the tree had been cut down so very slow dryingI t has been slabbed for nearly a years as well so an quite confident that it will hold up in use without movment or splitting. When I use unstabilised wood and to be honest that is all I use for the time being, I do the first three coats of finish using a thinned spar varnish sanded between coats before goin on the do the oil finish so with the epoxy sealing the underside and the spar varnish sealing the outside under the oil I think I have as good a finish as I can get to keep any dramatic moisture flow that might facilitate cracking or splitting of the scale.
 
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