Alternative wood for plane totes / saw handles

[D_W]

I thought I'd mention that some saw makers, including Disston, used fruitwood for saw handles. To my mind that probably means apple, but pear was certainly favoured by soem German tool makers for uses such as awl handles, etc. Lie-Nielsen used to use cherry for their handles (don't know if that's still the case, but my one and only L-N is now over 20 yerars old and it's not broken yet)

yes, apple. There was a picture posted on another forum years ago at the wood intake for disston. I would guess from the predictable raggedness of apple that if they used one unit of wood for every 10 that came in, I"d be surprised. It probably wasn't hard at the turn of the century to find someone who would burn the rest for heat, though. Maybe even at the factory.

There are a lot of orchards a couple of hours west of where disston is (about 25,000 acres' worth) and they were there at the time disston was making saws in enormous numbers. I'm sure there were other bits being shipped in as rail was well established and it went right by the area with the local orchards and straight into philadelphia.

 

[D_W]

yes, apple. There was a picture posted on another forum years ago at the wood intake for disston. I would guess from the predictable raggedness of apple that if they used one unit of wood for every 10 that came in, I"d be surprised. It probably wasn't hard at the turn of the century to find someone who would burn the rest for heat, though. Maybe even at the factory.

There are a lot of orchards a couple of hours west of where disston is (about 25,000 acres' worth) and they were there at the time disston was making saws in enormous numbers. I'm sure there were other bits being shipped in as rail was well established and it went right by the area with the local orchards and straight into philadelphia.

not the same picture:
apple wood

rather after most of the nasty bits were cut off, and if anyone has ever tried to find straight apple trunks, the picture of large logs here (which would be shorts and discards for almost any other wood) is almost unreal.

large apple trees here have been replaced by pygmy trees, so this kind of thing is never to be seen again.

I recall the discussion having a strong element of "the apple wood in disston's handles isn't actually apple".

Which is a really unusual thing to assert, but this is the internet (picture attached also as the site avertising the "big" unwatermarked photo encourages you to download the sample.

 

[JobandKnock]

Back in the 1980s I had some dealings with Geor Ott (aka Ulmia) and was told that they bought-in grubbed-out fruitwood trees, mainly pear but also some apple. This was fairly small section and used for turned tool habdles in the main because of the incomnsistent supply, I was told, but the timber is very fine grained and despite the high wastage the raw material was very cheap. They used to burn the offcuts in the factory boilers where it was used to raise steam for both heating and steaming beech wood

 

[Craig22]

I've been thinking about this, because I have a very useful Stanley 51/2 with a broken handle. But I have some hornbeam, that I used to make the bench dogs for my bench. Strikes me that it would be an excellent choice to resurrect the old Stanley. Not as beautiful as some of the other woods under discussion, but would certainly do the job.

 

[D_W]

I've been thinking about this, because I have a very useful Stanley 51/2 with a broken handle. But I have some hornbeam, that I used to make the bench dogs for my bench. Strikes me that it would be an excellent choice to resurrect the old Stanley. Not as beautiful as some of the other woods under discussion, but would certainly do the job.

small pores and smooth, it would be a good choice.

 

[IWW]

As DW sez, a fine-grained wood & a nice tactile finish are probably the main criteria. A smooth handle is so much more pleasant to hang onto for a long planing session. It doesn't have to be especially strong, Beech is hardly the most robust wood in the world, after all. I think the most common cause of tote breakage is trips to the floor, and the danger of breakage increases exponentially if the stud is loose.

I guess it's a bit smug to say we have a plethora of suitable handle woods down here in the wide brown land, both visually appealing & tough. There are many many species of Acacia with hard, fine-grained woods that come in a variety of colours & plain or figured grain.

This is A. rhodoxylon, which has the local name of "Western rosewood" & does makes a good substitute for the Dalbergia rosewoods:


And an Acacia (species uncertain) from my backyard:


There are several "She-oaks" (Allocasuarina spp.) which make excellent handles. Despite the superficial similarity to wood of the Quercus genus, these take an extremely fine finish & are as tactile (& durable) as the rosewoods & come in a variety of shades from deep brown:

To a pale brown:

And there's a "mutation" of a Western Australian species called "Lace she-oak" that makes quite spectacular handle material. I don't have any pics of plane handles in this wood, but this saw handle will give you the idea:


Southern Beech (Nothofagus spp) is similar to northern hemisphere Beech for structural strength, but finer-grained (no visible ray-fleck) & can be highly figured. One of its more spectacular manifestations is so-called "Tiger myrtle", a type of spalting. Again, I don't have any plane handle pics, but here's another saw handle:


There are many more, but that's enough to give you an idea of the choice we have. When it comes to making a new handle for something, you can think outside the box down here...
Cheers,

 

[jcassidy]

I decided to laminate some exotic scraps, use them up. The dark wood I think is mahogany, came from some sort of engineers test rig, heavily contaminated with oil, which is what the dark streaks are. The light wood comes from one of those horrible Asian bedside cabinets, the ones with the carved lattice work doors.

Roughly shaped out and waiting on new screws from Flinn & Co.

 

[jcassidy]

Had some rare free time today so finished the first handle. Thanks to @kinverkid for suggesting laminating, used up some offcuts that I've been holding on to for far too long.

Burned off some of the oil contamination and finished with some BLO.

I consider this a success despite bungling the slot for the back, so on to the next one.

*edit* needs sharpening, it's 14tpi so need to find a suitable file! Just about the limit of what my eyesight can do these days

Old one photo'd for comparison.

Many thanks for all the suggestions!