Letter Openers from 250 Year Old Spalted Horse Chestnut

[JohnGreco]

I made these as part of a custom order for St. Peter's Church in Philadelphia. Their 250 year old Horse Chestnut tree was taken down last year and I was lucky enough to work with the arborist as it came down, picking some of the better pieces of wood.

After drying it, the spalting really started to show nicely. I stabilized all of these with cactus juice and used tung oil to finish them. I tested my skill using calipers and while I found them good for this particular project, I think I would have too much trouble using them with a finish like CA where there is so much more build up. My hats off to those who do

As always, thanks for looking.

 

[StephenM]

Beautiful! I love working with wood that has some history to it.

 

[Bob Wemm]

Yeh, me too. Quite often it is the "story" that makes a beautiful object irresistable.

I entered a natural edge bowl in a show and it sat unsold for 4 days, then I decided to put the "story" next to the piece and it sold in 20 minutes.

Great work. Thanks for showing.

Bob.

 

[dankc908]

Nice!!!

 

[airborne_r6]

Those are really cool. I don't know how everyone else uses their calipers to get an exact fit with a CA finish but I have just started doing it and I turned the blank slightly undersized and applied plenty of CA, making the blank 1-2 thousands oversize. I then adjusted the fit by sanding down the thickness of the CA checking it with calipers, because I had turned the blank undersized I knew I wouldn't sand through the CA.

 

[Fishinbo]

Neat work.




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[dansills]

Very nice .. If I may ask - where did you get the hardware?

 

[JohnGreco]

Thanks, the hardware is from PSI.

 

[Bob Wemm]

Really cool,
they will make a great gift for someone.

Bob

 

[Bowman1060]

Yup That's cool
They are going to love them. the history will mean a lot and make them more precious.