Yew beauty.

[squishy]

love it

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

[Niels]

Nature's the best artist there is! That said you're real good too Mark

 

[Mesquite]

Sweet

 

[Haggis]

Great looking knife,,,,

 

[copper_head]

That's a lovely looking knife

 

[Dreadhead]

that is truly stunning Mark, yew is my personal favourite when it comes to using wood for this very reason

 

[sandbender]

mmm, that is nice. Great work.

 

[Hibrion]

Very nice timber. Just goes to show you don't need fancy foreign woods from threatened species to make a nice knife

 

[HillBill]

Thanks guys

Yeah, Yew can be stunning... its one of those woods that isn't like much else.... never seems to get eaten by bugs.... probably kills em..... and can be so different in grain structure from different parts of the same tree... Whats not to like

 

[Nice65]

We have a lot of Yew woodland here in West Sussex, and it's one of my favourites both to work and to look at.

I sometimes go off the beaten track and find old exposed roots which I get sandblasted.

I also found this huge slab that had peeled away from a huge old giant and lugged it back to the car with great difficulty. I'm sure there will be some of you that think this is unethical, but this awesome piece of wood amazes everyone who sees it, and is now preserved at least for my lifetime, hopefully longer. It's about 7' x 2'.

Here it is, I've had it years and it still needs more careful cleaning.

 

[HillBill]

Nice bit of wood that

 

[Nice65]

Nice bit of wood that

See that blunted off corner in the last pic? I only had a crappy old Fiat 127 in those days. I tried every which way to get that in the car, short of winding down the front windows and making a huge shelf across me, or popping out the rear glass, it just wouldn't fit. It's a heavy old lump, I had blood coming out of the shoulder I'd carried it on for over a mile, so out came the bow saw unfortunately. Having walked all that way, I wasn't about to leave it right on the main path.

What it needs now is a grit blast to polish out my wire brush marks, and some sort of sealant. I totally ruined one of my roots by using oil based wood treatment (beeswax and turpentine), it went black. Briwax seems to work well, but it's sort of obvious it's a surface coating and hasn't been taken in by the wood.

 

[HillBill]

Will boiled linseed oil not do the job?

 

[Nice65]

Will boiled linseed oil not do the job?

It soaks in very readily and turns the wood almost black. Any oil seems to do this.

I'll take a pic of an untreated root and the one I treated with beeswax and turps. The gentle reds are lost as soon as the oil touches the wood.

It's annoying as the guy that got me into this had a houseful of roots and Yew pieces that he'd finished with wax that were glasslike in appearance. Unfortunately I can't consult him as he never wore a mask while blasting and died after many years of it.

I think his method was to sit in front of a roaring fire with the wood and the wax and massage the stuff in with his fingers over many hours. He'd tend to do this with a few whiskeys or beers, burned the house down one night

 

[HillBill]

Shame that its so hard to preserve without losing the colours. look forward to the pics

 

[Chiseller]

Sweet

Nailed Horbury Bridge rapids .....wooooooo

 

[The Cumbrian]

When Mark first sent me the pics of the knife I was stunned, but it's better in real life, and feels fantastic in the hand:









And the sheath's really nice too:



Am I pleased? Oh yeah.

Cheers, Michael.

 

[HillBill]

Glad you approve mate