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Favorite domestic woods for utensil handles?

Jamie Straw

Jamie Straw

Joined
May 28, 2015
Messages
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Location
Bainbridge Island, WA
This is kitchen season for moi. I have copious amounts of walnut and eastern hard maple, and an eclectic collection of seasoned exotic wood blanks. I'm really wanting, though, to turn mostly out of domestic hard woods. Seems like what I have in stock is kinda boring though. I know some of you don't turn simple stuff like this, but I'm just wondering, in general, what are your favorite domestic hardwoods to turn?
 
Hey, it's hard to go wrong with that maple you have. 🙂
 
I really like apple for kitchenware. It turns nicely and looks beautiful. Since it spiral splits so readily, larger, bowl sized pieces can be tough to get, but smaller, handle sized material is plentiful. Any solid fruit wood is similarly nice to turn for this purpose but apple is the most available in my area. Plum tends to have pink and lavender colored stripes. Walnut, myrtle and madrone are other NW woods that turn well and work for handles, though not as attractive, in my view, as apple.
 
Jamie, another nice wood that I like is teak. It looks really nice with just an oil finish and it holds up well in a wet environment like a kitchen
 
Cherry, white oak, and Maple are my favotirtes for scoops, spoons, ladles etc.

Many years ago I made a lot of scoops in a Raffan design from cherry finished with walnut oil.
These little scoops look great turned from plain grain wood.

Most became gift sets used in canisters for flour, sugar etc.
We kept a few and they get used a lot.
 
Dean Center said:
I really like apple for kitchenware. It turns nicely and looks beautiful. Since it spiral splits so readily, larger, bowl sized pieces can be tough to get, but smaller, handle sized material is plentiful. Any solid fruit wood is similarly nice to turn for this purpose but apple is the most available in my area. Plum tends to have pink and lavender colored stripes. Walnut, myrtle and madrone are other NW woods that turn well and work for handles, though not as attractive, in my view, as apple.
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Oh, I love apple too. I have a bunch out in the wood bin from the huge tree that fell down last year. I'll have to check and see how (not)dry it is. I pick up plum when I can, either at the club auctions or from Steve Bartocci in Kirkland. I have a bit of myrtle, haven't turned it yet. One piece is probably rolling-pin size. Then I have two sections that were produced when I mis-cut a large hunk given to me, if there's any luck in the universe, I might be able to make very small boxes out of them. Thanks, Dean!
 
hockenbery said:
Cherry, white oak, and Maple are my favotirtes for handles and objects with handles like scoops, spoons, ladles etc.

Many years ago I made a lot of scoops in a Raffan design from cherry finished with walnut oil.
These little scoops look great turned from plain grain wood.

Most became gift sets used in canisters for flour, sugar etc.
We kept a few and they get used a lot.
Click to expand...
 
hockenbery said:
Cherry, white oak, and Maple are my favotirtes for scoops, spoons, ladles etc.

Many years ago I made a lot of scoops in a Raffan design from cherry finished with walnut oil.
These little scoops look great turned from plain grain wood.

Most became gift sets used in canisters for flour, sugar etc.
We kept a few and they get used a lot.
Click to expand...
I'll keep those in mind when trying out all-wood scoops and such (next year). These handles are for chrome/steel utensils. If you remember the chestnut bowl I made last year, I have some small pieces from off-cuts, and did a trial run today on a coffee-scoop handle. Turned much better than I expected, and really burns well with the right wire! Here's the bowl, will post the handles when they're done. Those blanks don't have any of the black wood in them, though.
Chestnut Bowl.jpg
 
I haven't had the occasion to run across any chestnut but that's some good looking wood. Seems to have sort of an ash quality to it or maybe Mulberry. Is that so or am I mistaken? I'm looking at it on an iPhone through trifocals . 🙂

I can still see that that's a nice looking Bowl.
 
A great list so far. I'll add crab apple (pretty much apple, I know!) Mountain ash, aka Rowan is great—not related to ash, it's in the rose family. Grows in the PNW, and can be very striking.

And alder with a caveat: very tight grained red alder from a 50+ year old tree holds up pretty well...it's nothing like the faster growing red alder.
 
A bit off topic. Not too much about wood but a lot about small objects and spindle turning is available on the fine woodworking site.
Fine woodworking has chapter 6 of Raffan book on their web site as a promotion for the book turning wood. It is all about turning small objects.

https://www.finewoodworking.com/assets/downloads/TurningWood.pdf
 
I made a handle for a pizza wheel from a piece of heartwood of ponderosa pine that I picked up on a backpacking trip. Now, I wish that I had a truckload of it. it has a very high resin content and smells like turpentine when it is being turned. The wood is so oily that soap and water won't hurt it and it still looks great after several years. It also has a pleasing grain contrast between early and late wood and not so plain as maple. Despite being plain, maple is outstanding and is one of my favorite woods.
 
I have a single small piece of olive wood and can't bring myself to use it. I just can't seem to find the right project

I was given a small mortar and pestle of olive wood and it is really beautiful.
 
Bill Boehme said:
I made a handle for a pizza wheel from a piece of heartwood of ponderosa pine that I picked up on a backpacking trip. Now, I wish that I had a truckload of it. it has a very high resin content and smells like turpentine when it is being turned. The wood is so oily that soap and water won't hurt it and it still looks great after several years. It also has a pleasing grain contrast between early and late wood and not so plain as maple. Despite being plain, maple is outstanding and is one of my favorite woods.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing, Bill. That's really cool. I'll have to try it. If I find some good stock, I'd be happy to send it your way.

I've been turning Sitka spruce burl bowls the last days, and it's also full of resin. I'm guessing it's at least twice the weight of standard Sitka spruce. So most resinous evergreen woods might be suitable? The exception of course something like Alaska yellow cedar (a cypress) that is so prone to checking with moisture gain and loss.

It's just a guess, but extremely slow growing branches (and roots) of many evergreens might also be suitable, as the density and resin content is frequently very high.
 
Ahem...

I really like that line too Jamie. Just sayin.

Kidding.

Plenty down here.
 
Mark Hepburn said:
I have a single small piece of olive wood and can't bring myself to use it. I just can't seem to find the right project

I was given a small mortar and pestle of olive wood and it is really beautiful.
Click to expand...

How about a set of procrastinator handles? Procrastinators are pretty hard to get moving, but handles might help. 🙄
 
I don't know. Maybe. I'll think about it for a while. Thanks.
 
Those are some beautiful bowls Mike
 
Maple is a very traditional and wise choice for impliments
Not so good for baseball bats or marshal arts weapons. Neither is teak DAMHIKT
 
Raul McCai said:
Maple is a very traditional and wise choice for impliments
Not so good for baseball bats or marshal arts weapons. Neither is teak DAMHIKT
Click to expand...
I have a fair amount of eastern hard maple -- our Big Leaf Maple tends to have wide growth rings and be a bit soft unless it's strongly figured. Traditional and wise are all well and good, but I suspect that for sales purposes might need a little more bling (in a wood-choice sense).

I'm feeling stingy about using the chestnut. Did a quick search yesterday for chestnut turning blanks, and it doesn't look promising.
 
I discovered yesterday that ipe, a very heavy and weather resistant South American hardwood used for decks and other outdoor purposes isn't very suitable for making a mallet. After using it to drive a new hickory handle onto an axe head, it was badly dented and splintered. Meanwhile the back end of the axe handle that was taking the beating from the mallet was completely unscathed.
 
Raul McCai said:
Maple is a very traditional and wise choice for impliments
Not so good for baseball bats or marshal arts weapons.
Click to expand...

🙂 Don't tell the major leager players. Or sports writer Isabelle Khurshudyan 🙂

"Maple is the wood of choice for the Nationals. Last season, about 70 percent of Major League Baseball players used maple bats, with 25 percent using ash and 5 percent yellow birch, according to MLB Players Association spokesman Greg Bouris."
 
Well, for just inserting a metal some thing into them, probably anything would work, so I would go for colored and figured, and a ferrule may be required depending on use. I love old madrone because of the red color. I have found out that the soap soak I do (half hand dishwashing soap, 1/2 water, 24 hours, rinse and let dry) really brings out the red in the madrone. If you have to pound or beat, then sugar/hard maple or beech.

Bill, your demolition of the Ipe is at least in part from side grain pounding into end grain. I pound the handle end on the concrete floor.

robo hippy
 
hockenbery said:
🙂 Don't tell the major leager players. Or sports writer Isabelle Khurshudyan 🙂

"Maple is the wood of choice for the Nationals. Last season, about 70 percent of Major League Baseball players used maple bats, with 25 percent using ash and 5 percent yellow birch, according to MLB Players Association spokesman Greg Bouris."
Click to expand...

Yep. And almost all of that maple comes out of the New England area.
 
Bill Boehme said:
I discovered yesterday that ipe, a very heavy and weather resistant South American hardwood used for decks and other outdoor purposes isn't very suitable for making a mallet. After using it to drive a new hickory handle onto an axe head, it was badly dented and splintered. Meanwhile the back end of the axe handle that was taking the beating from the mallet was completely unscathed.
Click to expand...

Back in the 70s I was a "handle jobber", selling wood replacement handles for ag and construction tools out of a van across about 6 states. I'd go buy the handles direct from a mill in the bootheel of Missouri. All clear hickory for striking tools and clear ash for long handled tools. That hickory is some stout wood for sure. A hickory, single bit axe hande cost me $1.05 each wholesale back then in lots of 200 dozen or so.
 
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Jamie,

I used a ferrule I turned on the metal lathe designed for lathe tool handles, the other two ferrules were
made from some aluminum rocket motor casings. The motor casings were thin enough that I could glue
them on the handle and trim them off with a skew and role the end slightly with the flat side of the skew.
Brass, Copper and Aluminum tubing is usually soft enough to turn & cut on a wood lathe, you just need a sharp
tool and will dull it quickly if you are cutting or shaping the metal.
 
Jamie Straw said:
I have a fair amount of eastern hard maple -- our Big Leaf Maple tends to have wide growth rings and be a bit soft unless it's strongly figured. Traditional and wise are all well and good, but I suspect that for sales purposes might need a little more bling (in a wood-choice sense).

I'm feeling stingy about using the chestnut. Did a quick search yesterday for chestnut turning blanks, and it doesn't look promising.
Click to expand...

I’m a bit late into this thread, but the favorite handles for and other kitchen tools has been Beech wood, certainly not the most striking wood but being a dense wood that won’t open up and split get rough etc, it is a very good wood for that.
Kitchen tools not being something I turn much at all, but, I have used Black Locust for some stirrers and spatulas that have withstood the rather hard use in the kitchen here and in my son’s kitchen, looks better than Beech and others 🙂
 
Jamie,

I am somewhat of a wood collector, our wood turning club has regular raffles to support the
club which presents plenty of wood types when members bring in offerings. When you make
your trip down south you could most likely locate some olive wood in that area. Freshly cut
green olive wood cuts with a continuous shaving and smells like olive oil. The only thing missing
is a glass of wine and some freshly baked bread. Ebay has a user that posts olive wood and burls
on a regular basis at reasonable prices.
 
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