Horse-chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) is a tree familiar to nearly everyone, in spring it offers us its splendid showy blossoms as a spectacle of natures beauty. Orginally from South East Europe, the chestnut is now widespread throughout Europe, yet depsite its abundant presence, it is barely used. The characteristics of chestnut wood is similar to that of poplar or willow, it is light and quite soft, its colors range from cream-white, pale yellow to reddish and brownish hues. The grain is usually calm and straight, but sometimes it shows very attractive curly and flamed figure. Fungus may infect the tree and mostly produces highly decorative colour reactions from silvery blue-gray, warm reddish gray, to dark brown. A very special and cherished rarity is the burl of the chestnut, which has very fine eye figure, and even greater depths of color, making it one of the finest burl woods in our assortment. Since this wood is soft and requires very sharp tools and some experience in woodturning, we recommend unstabilized horse chestnut only to advanced woodturners!
