Interesting Wood for a Pepper Mill

[Michael Tucker]

Hello all,

I have not posted here for a long while but thought I would share some pictures of a pepper mill that I made for some friends in California out of a tree that they cut down in their back yard. My friend says the wood is from the trunk portion of a Tabebuia tree. This wood is VERY hard and VERY dense! It sanded out as smooth as glass. I tried to finish it with Seal-a-Cell and then Arm-R-Seal but it only took up enough of that to enhance the grain pattern and it never really cured but instead was a fragile top coat. So I removed the somewhat sticky top coat with 0000 steel wool back to the wood and then polished it out with Minwax Finish Polish and that gave it a deeper finish with a nice soft shine. As for weight, it weighed in over 4 ounces heavier than a comparably sized and shaped walnut mill (10" tall and 2-3/4" at the base).

Enjoy,
Mike

[Eric Gourieux]

You've made a nice peppermill there. The form is very pleasing and the wood looks great. I bet it feels great in the hand. Well done

[Michael Tucker]

Thanks, Eric. The wood is so dense and it's incredibly tight grain and resulting smoothness really felt amazing! I don't think that I've felt any wood that finished out like that. Fortunately my friends have a few more chunks that they still have and they're going to send them my way.

[Montgomery Scott]

Nice looking mills. FYI, there is no such thing as an "ironwood" family. There are woods called ironwood because of their properties not because they are in the same genus or family.

[Michael Tucker]

Thanks. Noted and edited.