a bit of cocobolo

I don't know what I was thinking about when I bought 5kg of Cocobolo few months ago. Probably it was my greediness, as I got a really good deal on it. Yet I don't need THAT many wood. And I'm starting to suspect that I'm slowly developing allergy for it. Anyway, because I have so many wood I've made a number of practice handles.

What surprise me the most, is how different the texture of the wood on each piece. I mean it's completely different. Here I'll show 4 handles (2 of them in classic design and already finished, and another pair is work in progress). Just check out texture:









I've made somewhere around 10-12 handles out of this Cocobolo. Started making magnetic knife block, but still have more then 4 kg. Probably would have to sell majority of it to local knife makers.

 

I normally don't like multiple spacers but the bottom handles in the last three photographs are beautiful The first two pics are pretty nice also. Good work, and don't use up all that cocobolo before we can arrange something.

 

That is some great looking cocobolo, and nice handles too.

 

Great looking handles as I'm starting to practice a bit myself I like the look of cocobolo and it's cheap too. Good stuff

 

Hard to believe those handles came from the same piece of wood Anton. They all look excellent. How are you finishing them?

 

Yes, Mike, it's pretty surprising seeing so much different figure on different ends of one piece of wood.

I'm trying different ways of finishing and the two handles on top were sanded to about 600 grit, 2-3 coats of oil and then covered with carnauba wax and buffed.

At first I was going to try Marko's Tsourkan way for finishing Cocobolo, which is sand wood to a high grit and then just buff. But in the end I didn't dare to leave wood surface completely unprotected and decided to use a bit of oil and carnauba wax.

The look that I personally like the most comes from using lots of thin coats of Tru-Oil. But that's very time consuming and I have ran out of Tru-Oil anyway.

 

I always found Tru-Oil to be tacky when used on Cocobolo, it never really cured well. I thnk you oil/carnuba looks like a great finish.

 

Nice work! Cocobolo is quite oily itself, so it does not take very well to many finishes. You could just wax and buff, but I usually also apply a touch of finish first.

Stefan

 

I decided to add some more spam to this thread. Here are some WIP pictures of yet another Cocobolo handle.
First the design:


And now the construction.

Piece of Cocobolo and the last piece of 2-tone stabilized Ebony from Burl Source that I had:


A short session of cutting and we got all the needed pieces.



The spacers are a bit below 1mm thin. Trying to sand them before glueing is a real PITA.




And here's everything is ready for glueing



First I glued together all the spacer and ferrule. Next: body and butt. After that I started making tang slot. When it was done I glued everything and flattened it on the next day.




And then shaped. As I usually do it: just freehanding without any guides or any measurements at all. And in the end it's not perfectly octagonal. There are slight variations in size between sides due to eyeballing and freehanding, but I tried to keep them as low as possible.




My disk sander has a pretty old 100 grit sanding disk on it… and due to high wear it leaves finish probably a bit higher then 100 grit. Anyway, here's how handle looked after hand sanding with 150 and 240 grit sandpaper. Just a quick 5 mins session.




Now it needs a proper finish which isn't hard with Cocobolo. Right now it's covered with a thick layer of shellac. I did it to help cover the pores and will sand it later. But now with thick glossy layer of shellac under bright sun light it looks pretty nice.

 

nice mate, i never seen a handle WIP before, it looks good how the texture of the wood comes out.

 

That is Uber SEXY, Anton. I would be very interested in procuring one of your handles.

Al

 

Thanks!

I'm more or less happy with the results:

 

Great handles & nice music choice.

 

Nice and clean work. I like the tone-in-tone colors on that handle, and the spacer arrangement is nice. I have a batch to make with several 0.85mm spacers and I agree, getting these very thin pieces perfect is a bit of work. If I had an extra $1,000, I would buy a bigger - and more precise - band saw

Stefan

 

Thanks Stefan!

I have no idea how you could cut a precise spacer of 0.85mm to be honest… one day, maybe I'll have a chance to visit Hawaii and get a quick master class

btw, how about sharing a picture of you in your new protection helmet? Though forget the pictures. What we really need is a video of you in this helmet speaking slowly: Luke, I am your HandleMeister!

:BF