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Black locust is a very common tree here in the southern Appalachians and the local farmers actually refer to it as "honey locust" becasue of the beautiful honey colored grain of the wood. Along with eastern red cedar the locals also use split black locust for their fence posts because it has such good weather resistance qualities. Personally I like to use it for firewood because it's so hard and can smolder in the wood heater so well on a cold winters night. I also built a sturdy shaving horse from black locust several years ago and I expect that it will last for my life time and probably a little more.
Carving the black locust was quite the challenge and I spent the last two days working on it here and there. The dry wood was so hard I had to be careful not to break my knife blade, patiently removing one thin sliver of wood at a time until I had a face. It ended up having a nice contrast against the weather ridden wood root which had been blackened from a past forest fire. To finish I only applied one light coat of polyurethane.
Hi Dave,
ReplyDeleteI am very impressed carving black locust with a pocket knife wasn't easy. It looks real. good.http://matthewgrimes.wordpress.com/