Nice Ironwood getting hard to find?

K

Kentucky

Well-Known Member
We have been having a heck of a time finding decent ironwood lately. Even ebay prices has gone thru the roof and most of its mediocore at best. Are the sources and/or proccesing of ironwood drying up :confused: Whats the deal?
 
There are serious restrictions as to how/where/how much can be harvested. I'm not qualified to address this in detail.

The short answer is, yes, it's getting hard to find. If you have some good stuff, hang on to it. It will be worth even more next year :cool:
 
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I'd not be surprised if it's getting rarer. Expect the same with African Blackwood. In the meantime, Rob at Bad Dogs Burl source has some good stuff for pretty reasonable prices, and he and his wife are really nice. Check him out: www.burlsource.com
 
Desert Ironwood has been scarce for awhile. It only grows in the Sonora Desert in New Mexico, Arizona, southern California and Mexico. It is an endangered species and illegal to harvest except in some cases on Indian reservations. It takes 60 years for a desert ironwood tree to mature.

The old supply is drying up but some still gets harvested or smuggled in.
 
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Im gonna have to start buying it up I guess. I use to buy nice scales off ebay for as little as $5 a set, cant do that anymore :D
 
From what I've read the Desert Ironwood plant, which is actuallly a legume and not a tree, kind of forms it's own eccosystem in the desert so cutting a plant is more than just cutting a plant. Plants like Dersert Ironwood, Lignum Vitae, African Blackwood, Pink Ivory, and a lot of the Rose Woods have been overharvested and I wouldn't be a bit suprised if some of them end up on the CITES list. We might eventually have to get re-export permits to sell a knife handled with some of those woods out of country or maybe not be able to at all. In the meantime, I think that I'll restrict myself to purchasing form known dealers to increase the likelyhood that it has been legally harvested.

Doug Lester
 
Oddly, the Rockler store near me just started selling desert ironwood turning blanks. They finally must've gotten expensive enough for them! The end grain on the blanks I looked at seemed to be running on a bias, which I assume is okay for turning but probably not ideal for slabs.
 
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Mike Carter said:
It takes 60 years for a desert ironwood tree to mature.
Click to expand...

Actually it takes much, much longer than this. Some studies suggest that Ironwood trees may have life spans of 1200-1600 years.
The restrictions on harvesting this species are not easy to pin down, I have looked into it and there seems to be more mis-information floating around than useful fact.
 
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