Question about tool handles

[Jay Michaels]

I'm going to be making several tool handles for Christmas gifts. These will be for small hand-held garden tools (little trowel, three-pronged cultivator, etc...), so they won't take hard blows like a hammer handle or the like.

I'm making some of them out of ash and they've turned out beautifully.

I also have some small hedge tree limbs that I cut off a tree -- the limbs had died around a year or so ago, so they are somewhat dry already, though not at all rotten yet.

But my question is this: Can you turn a tool handle out of the center of a small piece of wood? The handles I've made out of ash have been from blanks I've cut from much larger logs, so none of them contain any pith, but these hedge branches, if turned right on the lathe, would contain pith in the center. Is that feasible, or is it destined for disaster?

Thanks.

[John K Jordan]

I'm going to be making several tool handles for Christmas gifts. These will be for small hand-held garden tools (little trowel, three-pronged cultivator, etc...), so they won't take hard blows like a hammer handle or the like.

I'm making some of them out of ash and they've turned out beautifully.

I also have some small hedge tree limbs that I cut off a tree -- the limbs had died around a year or so ago, so they are somewhat dry already, though not at all rotten yet.

But my question is this: Can you turn a tool handle out of the center of a small piece of wood? The handles I've made out of ash have been from blanks I've cut from much larger logs, so none of them contain any pith, but these hedge branches, if turned right on the lathe, would contain pith in the center. Is that feasible, or is it destined for disaster?

Thanks.

Small diameter pieces with the pith can work better than large pieces with the pith. Turning limbs with the pith is a time-honored turning method.

You mentioned "hedge". By that do you mean privet? I've had some good sized privet lately and it reminds me very much of dogwood. The sap wood is a uniform white, hard and fine grained, and when large, the heartwood is dark just like dogwood. Also, just like dogwood pieces that contain both heartwood sapwood can be unstable where they meet due to much higher shrinkage in the sapwood. Small diamater pieces, however, seldom have heartwood and more more stable.

JKJ

[Stan Calow]

Common for folks to call osage orange, "hedge" around here (as in hedgeapples).

[Mel Fulks]

US Gov. Pamphlet program had an Osage orange fence instruction book. Basically ,you planted the seeds, then wrapped each plant one turn onto next plant. That made an inpennatrable barrier. They say there are still lots of them to be seen
on old secondary roads.

[Alex Zeller]

If they are gifts and you want to include your turning skills have you thought about putting a copper band or two on the handles? If your worried about the pith splitting then the copper will hold it together. Aluminum and brass would work as well. One where the shaft of the tool goes into the handle will also make the tool stronger, that's why turning tools have them. But IMO they add a decorative style.

[Richard Coers]

I'd hope it hasn't rotted yet. You could have buried it in the ground and it would not be rotten in a year. It will very likely crack when turned though. On old hedge fence posts on the farm, a crack was about the only place we could drive a staple after a couple years.