Swiss Pearwood planks - 2-3/4" thick, very wide

[richard newman]

I have 3 logs of steamed Swiss Pearwood I no longer have room for, moving to a much smaller shop. Have had them since 1984, always stored in a heated space. I made number of pieces from this stuff in the 80's & 90'S, was one of my favorite materials, great to carve. I got these from a huge factory that made decorative faux antique molded plastic furniture. They had a crew of skilled Italian carvers who made the patterns for their molds, and pear was what they liked to work with, so they imported a container load from Switzerland. I was lucky that they agreed to sell me some of their stock (they did have 10,600 bd ft, way more than they could ever need!)

Log A, top - 6 planks, 68" long, 16"-24" wide $1040

Log B, middle - 4 planks, 58" long, 15"-23" wide $580

Log C, bottom - 4 planks, 72" long, 24-32" wide $1020

Please note that these planks have a healthy twist, and are not suitable for slab table tops, but they will yield great cutting for furniture or turning.

[Kevin Jenness]

Pearwood for patternmaking- who knew?

Your furniture work is exquisite. I recall seeing pictures of some pieces in FWW decades ago. Your musical instruments must be something to see!

20 years ago I worked on a veneered pearwood kitchen, The edgebanding was cut from some very twisty planks like these. The wood took a beautiful finish from sharp edge tools, like ebony. This year that kitchen is being torn out and replaced with the same layout in reconstituted maple veneer. Pearwood is no longer in fashion in that neighborhood it seems.

[richard newman]

Thanks for the kind words Kevin. My banjos are nowhere near as ornate and complex as my neoclassical furniture was. More like tools for players, altho they are as perfect as I can make them.

The patterns were decorative carvings, like period furniture. Not sure how they went from them to steel injection molds, but the final products were just thin plastic shells with a really good faux finish, looked really authentic til you touched them.

Pear is really great to work with hand tools, but the planks can look a little challenging until you cut your blanks out. One has to have worked with the stuff to really understand that.

[Kevin Jenness]

The patterns were decorative carvings, like period furniture. Not sure how they went from them to steel injection molds, but the final products were just thin plastic shells with a really good faux finish, looked really authentic til you touched them.

I wonder how that process stacks up against cnc carving in real wood for detail and economy. It feels weird to have hand-carved details in plastic furniture.

I was recently in a shop in Rochester that is licensed to reproduce Wendell Castle's designs. One of the crew was detailing a thin plastic multi-ovoid shell but I didn't have time to find out how they got to that result. Castle certainly had a remarkable evolution from his early stack-laminated and sculpted wood furniture to polished Jeff Koons-like pieces.

[richard newman]

Do a Google search for "syroco decorative objects" and you can see the sort of decorative carving those guys did for them. Not endorsing either of those approaches, but cnc carving usually looks like cnc carving to me, never as sharp and lively as hand work.

BTW, when Syroco closed down they were liquidated in an auction that I was very sorry to miss. They had mint, hardly used Oliver 24" jointer and planer in their pattern shop, amongst other cool stuff.

[richard newman]

Logs B and C are sold, just log A remaining. Here are some pix.

For those of you unfamiliar with pearwood, there's a photo of a planed area on one of the boards. These logs have some outstanding figure and color.