Myrtlewood scales

wall e

wall e

Well-Known Member
The newbie is tempting fate and wanting to use myrtlewood scales my grandfather cut from a slab from the family ranch. My question is, what do I need to avoid when doing this?
I'm making a knife for him for christmas and want to use the myrtlewood he gave me, so am seeking wisdom of others who are more experienced and well versed in the wood handles. Here is the birds eye I want to use
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And this is the rough blade with all the grind marks still
 
How long has the wood been drying?

Is it flat?

Have you cut out scale sized pieces yet?

plenty of tutorials on youtube on shaping.

Good luck, it is a neat piece of history!
 
It has been drying for years it is very dry and a few slabs bowed when he cut it into 1/2" thick slabs. Majority of the slabs are flat and solid. I have not yet cut a set of scales out of it yet. There is one piece that developed a loop where the wood had some darkness between it. The birds eye I want to use has a huge chunk missing from the underside so am looking around on the others. My other option for scales is straight grained yew wood or pine. Yew wood also came from a large slab he cut chunk off of for me to try to work with.
 
Have you given any thought to having some of it stabilized? It is a good idea for the long haul.
 
Stabalizing is a thought. Currently the budget for this is nothing so am doing things the hard/cheap way
 
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Here is the knife and scales doweled together to do fit and sand brass guard to the profile I have in my head.
 
Looks like you're off to a good start there, but I do have a question - it might be the angle, but with dowels in handle to hold it position, it looks like there might be a bit of extra space between spacer and scale?

Keep posting photos and folks here are VERY helpful.

Ken H>
 
There was a small error in my sanding the ends. The dowels are just for mock up to look for errors lile that
 
Myrtle/bay laurel actually makes a pretty good handle. It is pretty durable from what I have seen.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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After sanding to 150 I discovered a worm hole at the end of the scale and am going to mix some wood bondo ie epoxy and sawdust to fill it.
 
Buy some super glue, put some sanding wood grit in the hole, Put a drop or two on it as you sand and the hole fills.
 
Well the super glue had a high flow end on it so it now has some new figures in the scales. Will post pics later this week. Knife is almost done just have to get 600 and 1k paper on fri to get the fine scuffs out and then is the buffer for the brass and blade for a reflective finished blade and a baby smooth handle.
 
Here are the myrtle wood scales sanded to 2k and coated in danish oil natural color.
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I've been seeing you talk about Myrtlewood and kept wondering what the heck that was, so I went to Google. No wonder I've never heard of it, looks like that's an Oregon thing. At first I thought you were talking about Crape Mrytle, which we have here in the south, but it's kind of bland. Saw some pics of spalted Myrtlewood on Google, looked pretty cool.
 
I have a FEW scale slats 3ft ish so if you want some let me know. Mabbe trade for some local wood from your neck of the woods. Haha WOODS
 
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