Expressive Woods

If a distinctive design is the most important part of a hand made pepper mill, the wood is the most fun part. One reason I love wood turning is the wondrous range of woods I get to see. Even after doing this for many years I still am excited about each new shipment of wood.

The Domestic Woods

Much of my wood is local. Several mills came from trees downed in Hurricane Sandy. Friends (really good friends!) will give me wood from their trees or from their neighbors. But the wood has to be really special for one of my pepper mills. I have no interest in cranking out twenty regular old walnut mills from the same tree. So the local wood I use will come from tree crotches, or spots where the tree started rotting ('spalt'), or other irregular pieces. It might simply have a knot in the right place or a outstanding grain pattern. But it needs to be special

Other domestic wood comes from across the country, in the theme of unusual or distinctive. Maples from Washington state are plentiful and offer some spectacular wood variations (spalt, curl, quilt). Old California olive trees can be stunning. Some are woods I've never heard of, and those are often the best surprises. (spalted hackberry, right)

Exotic Woods

Its called exotic for a reason. These woods come from all over the world and their special properties make them worth importing. Woods like Cocobolo, Bocote and Ziricote can be extraordinarily beautiful. I love the burls from southeast Asia (Amboyna, left) and Australia (Coolibah).

These woods' special characteristics make them rare, and unfortunately, expensive. So I'm hunting for woods literally every day, trying to find pieces that are beautiful and reasonably priced. Just today I found a wood turner who is selling off his old Camphor burl stock. It wasn't exactly cheap, but I'm excited to find it at the price I paid.

Highly figured Ziricote is hard to come by, especially in turning blanks. I found some of this rare wood at an unusually low price. The seller was a guitar builder who was importing the slab for guitar bodies. US Customs suspected drugs inside and drilled a hole through it, totally ruining it for the luthier. The drill hole was in a fortuitous place and I was able to get four pepper mills from it!

Be on the Lookout for Beauty

Sometimes beauty is right in your face but you need to look for it. My UPS man gave me a chunk of beam from a decrepit old barn. After I took out all the hidden nails and cut it on my band saw I found a few things. There were cracks, old worm holes and even a live worm. I also saw potential for beauty. The mill above is the result. It might not conform to typical standards of beauty, but its a real eye-catcher. I love it.

Various wood treatments can take a nice piece of wood to another level. I love doing dyed mills, despite the extra work involved. All the extra fussing gets as much out of the wood as possible, and I like to think of these as the polar opposite of the pictured mill above. All this variety keeps wood turning fresh and exciting for me.