Is this walnut good for handles

scherf68

Well-Known Member
A friend has this walnut he doesn't need anymore. It is over 30 years old and from a deceased gunstock maker. Is it worth to get for handles, never used walnut before and looks really nice. Any input from the pros here? He wants to give me for free but told him would trade a knife for it.

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40 yr old wood in this handle...Walnut also. It looks like you have English and Claro there. The handle in my pic is Claro. worth the trade!
 

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Walnut is great for knife handles and it doesn't need stabilization. Won't hurt it but doesn't need it.

That top piece of lighter colored walnut could be a rarer type of walnut. I have a walnut guy near me that found a lamp at a yard sale. He bought the lamp just for the rare type of walnut. Tore the lamp apart. I'm no walnut expert so I could be wrong.

I would get it identified as you could have something a little more valuable. Particularly if it was from a gunstock maker. They generally have your really nice walnuts: english, claro, marblecake, bastogne, etc.

The third one down kinda looks like a feather crotch as well but hard to tell from the pic.
 
Thanks! What a great day, I learned something new.
Check this out, see Comment Section & "Paradox" walnut.

Too bad they don't show some truly good samples. The guy near me supplies Fender Guitars with different types of walnut and he's also had an acoustic guitar made from his claro that is truly amazing.

Bastogne
bastogne.jpg

Claro
claro.jpg

Marblecake
marble.jpg
 
Always wear a respirator when grinding wood. No kind of dust is any good for you, but some woods will seriously put you in the hurt locker. Cocobolo and African Blackwood dust are particularly dangerous for me. Even though I wear a respirator, getting the dust on my hands and arms makes me break out in a rash. The stuff is basically poison ivy wood, so imagine what breathing it does.
 
John, I am the same way. It started with Cocobolo, then went to Bocote, Rosewoods, Ziricote and got really bad when I worked with stabilized Curly Mango and forced me to stop doing knifemaking several years ago (I didn't want to only be able to use synthetics). I would break out anywhere the skin was exposed to the dust, even areas that my hands touched when they were dusty, or where sweat carried the dust too. Hot water would make it puff up horribly, cold water would return it to almost normal, but still slightly swollen. To this day, I cannot work with non stabilized woods anymore due to getting a rash where the dust settles, despite wearing a respirator. It's been almost 7 years after the reactions got really bad. African Blackwood is a sensitizer as well and over times, makes you more sensitive to woods that you were fine with before, too, so its a double whammy.

Oddly enough, I can work with stabilized woods again where before, I would get the same reaction as working non stablized woods. I save the woodworking for the last part of the shop time and then jump in the shower immediately and wash off thoroughly.
 
Taz you bring up some great points, particularly that black wood is a sensitizer. I’m glad to hear that you can work with some woods again.

A mentor of mine drove the respirator requirement into my brain when I was starting out. He told me that as a newbie he almost died. He was grinding some cocobolo and went into anaphylactic shock. His wife found him unconscious on the shop floor with the grinder running and called the ambulance. She had no idea what was wrong with him, and even if she had he’s too damn big for her to have dragged him to fresh air. Already being in shock, I don’t even know if fresh air would have helped. Something we all need to think about.

Our own Ed Caffrey’s ordeals put the fear of God into me. A respirator is cheap. There’s just no reason not to wear one especially with the right filters.
 
Yeah, it started when I hand sanded 15 Cocobolo saya for kitchen knives. I was hand sanding and didn't use a respirator, but got all swollen and rashy for several days afterwards, so I used the respirator even when hand sanding. That fixed the issue, but as time went on and I used the oily, exotic woods in the rosewood family (very popular on Japanese kitchen knives!), I started noticing more of a reaction, so I had to phase out several woods over the course of the year. When I worked the Curly Mango, even stabilized and with respirator, I got a rash really bad and swelled up. It was during hunting season in the fall, so I thought I may have gotten into some poison ivy, oak, sumac or something and didn't realize it was the wood until I used the Curly Mango again after hunting season was done and realized it was the wood. Even dust from simple pine boards made me swell up, so I shut down the shop.
 
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