Geodes

Flush with cash from selling my biggest board (Wawona) and arguably my prettiest board (Titan), I did a quick (and expensive) shopping trip to Tropical Exotic Hardwoods of Latin America. I found this place on the web and I can only say Wow! Beautiful, amazing wood on a whole different level. I will be a customer for life. Sam Maloof buys wood from these folks. Anyway...I bought a block of turning stock (Cocobolo) and promptly re-sawed several sticks. Re-sawing cocobolo is a lot like cutting open Geodes . I'm always amazed at what grain pattern I get after I resaw that first piece. Depending on the orientation of the cut, I either get very fine intricate lines or very wide open grain lines with lots of wild and beautiful knot patterns. And the colors are amazing - reds, orange, purple and everything in between. Fun stuff. The only downside (for me) when re-sawing cocobolo is I have to wear some serious dust protection, turn the air-filter on in the shop when I'm done and leave the shop for awhile, otherwise I sneeze like crazy! With these sticks and some other pieces of nice wood I've been picking up, I have board faces for about another 70 boards or so, including another 3 1/2 foot long board. I'm still plugging along on the 38+ boards (as per my website) and I've finished all the squares glue-up on the 9 tournament friendly chessboards. The chessboards still need their bottoms and borders.