tiny snakewood cracks

[sorcerertd]

I had a scrap left sitting around for a couple years, I was going to use it for segmenting something (eventually?), but decided to add it to the refrigerator magnet bucket. (Why is there a D in fridge, but not in refrigerator?) Magnets are a good stress reliever project that I can pick up or walk away from easily and I don't even stress if I mess a couple up. Anyway, they aren't anything fancy, but I wanted to show how "cracked" they looked after finishing with a few coats of Pens Plus. Looking at the finish on the end grain, I can see where it would have the tendency to crack on a pen. I can't see spending that much on a piece of wood with such a high probability of cracking.

 

[Lmstretch]

I think Snakewood is some of the most beautiful wood there is, but it almost always cracks.
i had a pen that I made and it had no cracks, I was so proud of that pen. But one day after the pen had been in one of my pen display boxes for a few years, I noticed a crack! Dam those cracks! Lol

 

[d_bondi]

I think Snakewood is some of the most beautiful wood there is, but it almost always cracks.
i had a pen that I made and it had no cracks, I was so proud of that pen. But one day after the pen had been in one of my pen display boxes for a few years, I noticed a crack! Dam those cracks! Lol

Same thing happened to me with a pen I made with Snakewood and my cracks weren't small, Over a years time they split the entire length of the tube.

Someone told me once.... "There are two kinds of Ebony. Ebony that has cracked and Ebony that will crack". I think it must be true for Snakewood as well. Actually, I have had good luck with Ebony.

 

[Drewby108]

I made a harry potter wand out of snakewood. First go at carving, and it came out pretty well. I wish I kept it instead of giving it to the woman I did. I used the remainder of the blank for my second pen, a sierra. My ex still uses it daily and refuses to let me try to fix the tiny cracks in the finish from the wood moving.

It's a challenging wood, for sure, but so gorgeous.

The handle of the wand is a snake biting the shaft, which I turned on my metal lathe so I had a super straight cut (I was too new to woodturning trust myself to freehand that).

 

[Drewby108]

And since I didn't mention it before, I actually kinda like how those cracks showed up on your magnets. They look similar to rays that you find on other woods, not just random cracks.

 

[MRDucks2]

Made the wife a snakewood pen she loves and it has very fine cracks that are difficult to see unless you look for them. She thinks it adds to the character. I have an ebony pen on a Knurl GT that has large cracks slightly offset from each end that move from completely closed and hard to see to gaping open enough to see the brass underneath depending on temperature and humidity.

 

[BULLWINKLE]

I had a scrap left sitting around for a couple years, I was going to use it for segmenting something (eventually?), but decided to add it to the refrigerator magnet bucket. (Why is there a D in fridge, but not in refrigerator?) Magnets are a good stress reliever project that I can pick up or walk away from easily and I don't even stress if I mess a couple up. Anyway, they aren't anything fancy, but I wanted to show how "cracked" they looked after finishing with a few coats of Pens Plus. Looking at the finish on the end grain, I can see where it would have the tendency to crack on a pen. I can't see spending that much on a piece of wood with such a high probability of cracking.

View attachment 370586 View attachment 370587

Snakewood is indeed beautiful but highly prone to cracking. Usually it happens after turning and not during. Impossible to stabilize (until now) as it is extremely dense.
Recently, one wood dealer found a way to stabilize snakewood with great results. He doesn't sell it in sizes for pen blanks, but possibly would on special order. He mostly sells the snakewood in sizes for knife scales. It's also way more expensive than (the already expensive) un stabilized snakewood.

 

[Lew]

This is in response to your question about the d in fridge. Probably more than you ever wanted to know. When English was being developed, it took in a lot of Germanic, French and Latin words. When spelling became more or less standardized, without getting into too many specifics, g at the end of a word was hard (like gutter) when it ended the word (pig, hog, dog). Most of these short words were Anglo-Saxon. A word ending in g with an e after it became a soft g (as in giraffe), words like huge, rage, cage.

The French applied that throughout so their word for judge is juge. We changed that sound to dg as in bridge, badge, dodge. That's where we get the spelling. (Technically, there are various rules that apply such as the length of the vowel preceding the g and also from what language the word was adopted into English.)

The word fridge came into use in print in the 1920s, probably a shortened version of the brand name Frigidaire, but it was in common use for decades before. Some people used the spelling frig (pronounced fridge) as a shortened form of the word. The latest use of this spelling I could find was in 1988. But there is already a verb in English meaning to have sexual intercourse. Have you ever heard of anyone say frigging or its variant fricking? So we could add an e and have frige and pronounce like the French, or adopt the standard English spelling and use a dg.

So there you have a shortened version of why the d. (I have advanced degrees in languages which is one of the reasons I know this. Or as my wife says, I have a lot of useless information floating in my head.)

 

[derekdd]

Same thing happened to me with a pen I made with Snakewood and my cracks weren't small, Over a years time they split the entire length of the tube.

Someone told me once.... "There are two kinds of Ebony. Ebony that has cracked and Ebony that will crack". I think it must be true for Snakewood as well. Actually, I have had good luck with Ebony.

This is my experience, also. The last ebony pen I turned, I was so excited I'd completed it with no checking only to see cracks a couple of days later on both upper and lower sections.

I've given up on both snakewood and ebony for this reason. It's easy enough to ebonize another wood, and there are so many other spectacular figured woods, I don't miss the frustration of working with snakewood.

"A man's gotta know his limitations." Harry Callahan

 

[sorcerertd]

This is in response to your question about the d in fridge. Probably more than you ever wanted to know. When English was being developed, it took in a lot of Germanic, French and Latin words. When spelling became more or less standardized, without getting into too many specifics, g at the end of a word was hard (like gutter) when it ended the word (pig, hog, dog). Most of these short words were Anglo-Saxon. A word ending in g with an e after it became a soft g (as in giraffe), words like huge, rage, cage.

The French applied that throughout so their word for judge is juge. We changed that sound to dg as in bridge, badge, dodge. That's where we get the spelling. (Technically, there are various rules that apply such as the length of the vowel preceding the g and also from what language the word was adopted into English.)

The word fridge came into use in print in the 1920s, probably a shortened version of the brand name Frigidaire, but it was in common use for decades before. Some people used the spelling frig (pronounced fridge) as a shortened form of the word. The latest use of this spelling I could find was in 1988. But there is already a verb in English meaning to have sexual intercourse. Have you ever heard of anyone say frigging or its variant fricking? So we could add an e and have frige and pronounce like the French, or adopt the standard English spelling and use a dg.

So there you have a shortened version of why the d. (I have advanced degrees in languages which is one of the reasons I know this. Or as my wife says, I have a lot of useless information floating in my head.)

A wise guy, eh? LOL. Seriously, though, I like this. Though the question was meant as a joke, I find philology fascinating. I'll just keep adding the friggin "D" in fridge.

 

[sorcerertd]

And since I didn't mention it before, I actually kinda like how those cracks showed up on your magnets. They look similar to rays that you find on other woods, not just random cracks.

I thought the same thing. The pictures were kind of a fair warning for those that don't know how snakewood can "bite" you. I feel like it would be less prone to cracking if it weren't drilled and tubed, but that's just a theory.

That's a really nice magic wand! I wanted to make one out of snakewood, but a 1x1x12 hobby stick of grade A was almost $70!

It's also way more expensive than (the already expensive) un stabilized snakewood.

Ouch! See above note about a $70 blank that is not stabilized. Somebody should develop a resin substitute.


I've made one pen with Snakewood and have not heard anything from the buyer about it. That was quite some time ago. If I had known the nature of it, I probably wouldn't have sold it. I have a beautiful diamond knurl RB made of Ebony. It has a hairline fracture that most people say they can't see. I can't unsee it, though, but it makes a nice personal carry pen since you can't see it unless you are very closely inspecting it. It shows up as a jagged white line. I got lucky that it wasn't much worse.




I made a magic wand from curly ebony a while back as a special request. It broke at the tip, but I think the repair made it even nicer than I expected it to. There was no hiding that scar, so the wand wears it proudly. The repair was done with a soda can and some 20ga wire. The new tip is a from a scrap piece of the blank from the above pen.