hidden wood stash

I was cleaning my room tonight and found a small box full of wood, all cut and milled and ready to be made into lockpicks. I thought I was missing some wood, but really I thought it was only a few pieces, not 19 cut pieces and one piece that has not been prepared. Among the wood was 4 pieces of boxwood, a thick piece of ebony, one piece of dalmatian ebony, tulipwood, snakewood, and one piece of sandal wood.



Also found a lot of small tools, carving wax, and several other non-tool things I had been wondering about.

new tools and new wood

Recently I have been making some small wood carving knives. The blades are made of either drill rod or old burs.



In the photo below, the top knife I made over a year ago. The blade is really good, I think it's probably my favorite, but the handle is not that nice looking. I am going to make a new handle for it later. The one below it is snakewood, I made it recently. The ferrules on both of them are sterling. The handle at the bottom with no blade is ebony with ivory at both ends. I really like that one, I just haven't decided which blade to put in it yet.



I would like to make a handle completely out of ivory, but it's a little expensive for me right now, and I might get in trouble with customs if they find me trying to bring it into Korea.

I received some new wood today. Some I got to make lockpicks, and some I got to make more tool handles. I got more ebony, snakewood, and boxwood. I am not sure what I was thinking when I ordered the boxwood in that size. I could have ordered cheaper thinner pieces, since I'm going to end up cutting most of it away.

I also got some lignum vitae (two light brown pieces on the right), which I used once before in a hammer handle, and two woods I have never used before, pyinma and buckeye burl. The longest piece is the pyinma, I sanded and oiled the right half of it so I could get an idea how it will look when it's finished. The buckeye burl is the black and white piece below it.



I ordered it all from Griffin Exotic Wood. I have ordered from them several times now and have always been happy with them. I ordered from another company a couple times that wasn't very good. They didn't have their wood graded. They just had "ebony", they don't say anything about the quality, if it's black, or brownish or has brown streaks in it. I don't want ebony with brown in it. If I wanted brown I would buy some other kind of wood. Griffin has most of their wood priced and sold according to a grade they give it. Since I am just buying these little pieces I usually buy the best quality. There may be other companies better than them but I don't order wood very often so I just stick with one I like.

Below are all the picks I am working on right now. The types of wood are, from the top down:
ebony
holly
zircote
micarta + wood handle scales x2 (I can't remember what type at the moment)
ebony
cocobolo x2
boxwood
snakewood
boxwood



The two picks at the top I probably won't finish. They both require a lot of detailed carving, and I don't even like them that much, so I think there's better things I could spend my time on right now.

In the low quality photo below are a pair of picks I am keeping for myself. I just finished the ebony one last night. It was almost finished before I went to Korea last year, but I never epoxied it together for some reason. The white pick is holly, I need to find something to seal the wood so it doesn't get dirt worked into the grain of the wood from being handled.

I cannot remember if I mentioned it before, but some Chinese or Korean company is making plastic copies of this design.

wood handled picks

I have been making some more wood handled lock picks lately, but most people are still asking for aluminum handles. I am a little sick of the aluminum handled ones, but I am not going to turn down the work. Wood is so fast and easy to work compared to metal. I got some new wood 2 weeks ago and have more wood coming this week.

This is one of my favorites. The wood is holly. I didn't have an order for this one, I just wanted to try working with the holly.

dye and ebony

It's been a week since I got the new dyes, but I haven't done more than one test piece of each of them. I want to test a couple of them again, but I think most of them are pretty good. I'll post photos sometime.

My carved ebony piece is coming out ok. I took this photo last week, the front still looks about the same, most of the work I have been doing lately has been on the back. The edges are kind of chipped , but that's not hard to fix. The problem I have been having is smoothing the wood. I'm trying some different things, but I'm not really sure what the best way is.

current work

This is another brooch I started last year that was in the drawer with the other unfinished pieces I had forgotten about. I worked on it some more, and I think its ready to anodize. I am getting a little sick of the colors I have so I ordered some more the other day. I am going to wait till I get those and test them before I decide what color to anodize this piece.



Since I got some wood for the stands for my brooches and hammer handles I have wanted to work with it more. So when someone asked me if I could make them lock picks with wood handles I was happy to give it a try. This is the second one I made for that person. The handle is zircote.


I know I shouldn't be starting new pieces with all the unfinished ones I have laying around, but I have been really wanting to try carving wood. So a couple days ago I started carving a brooch in ebony. The design is similar to my aluminum work with a scale pattern on it. So far it is going ok. I haven't taken any photos. I have never really carved wood before so I was kind of worried how it would go and I thought it might be a total failure that I would rather just forget about. I think it will be ok, so I will take some pictures next time I work on it.