From Oliver Cowdery

I was just reading about the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood, and came across Oliver Cowdery's description of John the Baptist's visit. Part of what he wrote really struck me, especially when thinking of current world conditions.
"Man may deceive his fellow man; deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave, but one touch with the finger of his love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Savior, from the bosom of eternity, strikes it all into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind!"

About that Ironwood...

This is how I used the smaller piece of the ironwood that I showed earlier. It is just finished up, and has one coat of linseed oil so far.

Desert Ironwood

The most exciting gift I got for Christmas is some Desert Ironwood. My cousin located some on private land, and with the blessing of the property owner, we harvested some off a big, gnarly, uprooted old trunk of tree. Harvested sounds so professional. In reality, we busted chunks off with an axe and a trailer hitch. Hey, it is what we had on hand. Since we were both there on vacation, the tool scrounging continued as we broke it down into luggage sized pieces. I opted for a hacksaw, not wishing to destroy the nicer saws that we had access to. We did break one blade, but it was overall not too bad. Sectioning it at home, I have the benefit of a good vise on a stable workbench, so cutting is much easier. I still used a coarse hacksaw blade, because I prefer being able to throw away dull blades to sharpening them. With wood this hard, blades dull quickly. These pictures show outside and inside, with cut surfaces cleaned up with a rasp, and wetted to show the grain better.

Just look at the handles

It is a teensy bit embarrassing to see how much attention I have been giving to knives lately. I guess I have a tendency to obsess over one thing at a time. Here are another couple of knives- one made from a kit and the other from scraps of wood and metal.
This is the kit knife. The handle is made of Dymondwood- a laminated, resin impregnated wood veneer product. I do not recall the species of wood it is (supposed to be). A great material for a knife handle, because it is stable and moisture resistant, and it doesn't look bad. I put some butcher block oil on it to make it shine, even though finishing it is not necessary.
This little guy started out as a really cheap backsaw from Home Depot. I did not have very high hopes for this, I mostly just wanted to try making a knife from scratch. I cut the metal with a cold chisel and shaped the blade with a bench grinder and sandpaper. The handle is a scrap of black walnut, and the brass pins are not pins at all, but brass machine screws. I made it and tried it out in the kitchen, and it works like a champ. As a reward for faithful service, I finally finished it with (you guessed it) butcher block oil.

Mostly concerning the wood

My problem hasn't been that I haven't had any projects going, it is that they weren't strictly about wood. This photo is of a knife that I rehandled with hickory. The wood is from a sledgehammer handle. It is beautifully tough and not bad to look at, either. I finished it with butcher block oil until it shines.