Sawing Desert Ironwood

Here we give you a small insight into the laborious production of our desert ironwood handles for knifemakers:
After the blocks of this heavy, extremely hard and expensive wood have traveled halfway around the world, they are first stored for about 3-6 months in our storage room with controlled climate to slowly get used to the climatic conditions in Germany. Any sudden change in humidity and temperature could result in ugly cracks, the thinner and smaller the pieces are, the faster they acclimatize.
Then comes the trickiest part of the work, at this point it is decided in which direction the first cut will be made - but first one or two surfaces, as angular as possible, are planed on the blocks in order to be able to judge the course of the fibres: A particularly fine, almost pure piece of grained wood revealed its special beauty during this step - something like this is not found every day, although the bark already had the telltale little round humps that are so typical of grained wood:
On the opposite side of this block the full splendour of the wood was revealed: after a suitably thick strip was cut out of the block, it could then be cut slowly and very carefully into strips suitable for knife-gauge handles:
About 10 mm thickness is sufficient for most knifemakers: After the cut into the strips, which are now still much too long, one can already guess after book-like laying out of the thin wood thicknesses, what a stunning result lies ahead!
If these strips are now cut into the length of 120 mm, which is the standard length in our country, the finished result is on the machine table: a little sprayed on pure alcohol lets the probably most beautiful and most expensive wood in the world shine in its full beauty!

You will find such pieces in our frequently changing category: