Holly identification

[Roger Feeley]

We are taking down a tree that too near a cellar stairway. The tree guy told me it’s a holly. This thing is about 16 “ diameter and 40 feet tall with a very straight trunk. When I hear holly, I think very white and very expensive. I think it’s an American holly. So is this the good stuff?

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[Mel Fulks]

Absolutely

[Jim Becker]

There are folks who would kill for that...

[jerry cousins]

this is very "good stuff"

[John K Jordan]

We are taking down a tree that too near a cellar stairway. The tree guy told me it’s a holly. This thing is about 16 “ diameter and 40 feet tall with a very straight trunk. When I hear holly, I think very white and very expensive. I think it’s an American holly. So is this the good stuff?…

The leaves on yours are somewhat different from what I usually see here but I know they vary widely. I found this:
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The bark looks right. This time of the year the trees should have berries and may be ripening to a bright red.

I love holly for woodturning for its white color and especially for the fine grain - a sharp gouge can leave a surface that needs little or no sanding.

If you want holly to stay white my experience and the advice from the experts is to cut the tree when the weather is quite cold and “dry aggressively”; kiln drying is recommended but all of mine is air dried. If cut in warm weather it tends to get an ugly grey stain, from fungus I think. I have some holly I processed in the winter that has stayed a beautiful pure white and other cut and dried when warmer that looks awful. Fortunately even the ugly grey holly is still great at the lathe and can be bleached or dyed.

JKJ

[Mel Fulks]

Yes, there are lots of holly varieties, but once you get rid of the leaves the wood pieces “ all look alike”. It’s the whitest of all woods . Boxwood
is nice if you prefer yellow. When holly is adjacent to to a dark wood , especially ebony , it’s dust can smear into the holly. Only used them
together a couple of times. Sanded , then used sharp scraper. The holly is so grainless that it’s surprising how the black dust sinks in.

[Lee Schierer]

Holly is very white. I was given a piece years ago when I traveled for work. The person who gave it to me was a fellow woodworker I met through a woodworking forum. Here are two projects I made using some of the holly.
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[John K Jordan]

Holly is very white. I was given a piece years ago when I traveled for work. The person who gave it to me was a fellow woodworker I met through a woodworking forum. Here are two projects I made using some of the holly.

Nice!

I know a guy who made good use of holly on his ornamental rose engine lathe. He liked it because of the color and because it cut so cleanly. He said he ordered high quality pure white holly from some supplier and it was very expensive. (I don't remember the name of the supplier.)

Most of what I have I cut from smaller trees, maybe 8-12” in diameter. But once a friend gave me some holly log sections that were between 20 and 24” in diameter - the only time I’ve seen such big holly trees! That was maybe 15 years ago and I still have some good-sized chunks that somehow stayed white, probably because they were cut at the beginning of winter the force few years of sir drying they were in a cool place. They are well dried now. 😁

Holly does have an abundance of pores, hard to see because of the whiteness so it can easily pick up fine sawdust and color from adjacent darker wood but this lets it take stain and dye well. I know woodturners who have used it as a substitute for ebony, dying with a black leather dye.

Another potential problem with at least some holly is the presence of knots. That seemed to be less of a problem with larger managed trees presumably since small branches were trimmed off as the tree grew. All the many dozens of holly trees in our woods have branches starting near the ground and have lots of knots.


For this message I'm using a computer with access to my photos so here are a few turnings from holly. I love holly for finials and thin spindles. Here's one from holly and one from ebony; the photo was to illustrate using 2MT collets to hold the work with a 1/2" tenon for turning.

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A couple of ornaments with holly, the whitest bell is holly. Sometimes for thin spindles I use Myland's shellac-based friction polish which makes it holly little less white.

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The Myland's finish also has an unintended side effect - I've had a number of people tell me that my holly wands and batons look like bone, or with some carving and fill color, antler. Some of the white wands are holly.

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JKJ

[Mel Fulks]

Thanks for putting those up. The box is my favorite, I like to be warm and when I go left , right …I feel warm …cold. Warm colors save money
on heating bills . Pretty sure that in olden days some people made their own dentures out of holly , “Only trouble with this stuff is it’s too
dog-gone white !” Probably used them for going to church , not eating.

[jerry cousins]

here's 2 pieces i did several years ago when holly "boards" were not too uncommon - but still kind of rare finds - the fish are holly and ebony. the box is holly with several species for the butterfly
jerry

[Mel Fulks]

Jerry, the fish are marvelously artful and beautiful ! Now, Why did you kill that butterfly?

[Roger Feeley]

I just looked another tree that's also too close to the foundation. It's also a holly.

[Peter Schussheim]

Man I would give an arm and a leg to have holly trees like yours growing in my yard! :)


I just looked another tree that's also too close to the foundation. It's also a holly.

[John K Jordan]

I just looked another tree that's also too close to the foundation. It's also a holly.

I’d better drive up next week - you are going to need some help so you don’t have too much holly wood on your hands.

[Larry Frank]

Holly is so nice. I have read that you need to saw it and kiln dry quickly to preserve the color.

[al ladd]

Holly is so white that even its end grain is white, whereas maple and other "white" woods tend to be rather dark in their end grain. I use holly for this reason in a body of work using end grain laminations as decorative top panels for boxes large and small. I've used actual ivory in inlay work, and honestly holly end grain reads more like what one wants ivory to look like than ivory! Here's an example:https://www.alladd.com/large-jewelry-boxes/running-pelta-jewelry-box/index.html

[John Kananis]

I'm curious how you get the wood to pop in the middle of those riding crop handles. Is it with a torch and wire brush? If so, how do you protect the rest of the piece while "burning"?

Also, amazing score on the holly!!!

[Phil Mueller]

Beautiful work Al!

[John K Jordan]

I'm curious how you get the wood to pop in the middle of those riding crop handles. Is it with a torch and wire brush? If so, how do you protect the rest of the piece while "burning"?…

Do you mean any of these crop handles in particular?

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I always use some type of texture on crop handles to make them more secure in the rider’s hands, important when going over jumps and such. Before I started making them I talked with a trainer about that and other features. Besides the texturing, the flair on the end helps keep the crop secure. An important safety feature is a rounded end - no sharp points to stab a rider in a fall!

I use a variety of techniques on spindle turnings in general but I’ve never tried a torch or a wire brush.

Some are textured with a small texturing tool with a star wheel (makes incredible patterns!), occasionally a machinist’s knurling tool. (note that a knurling tool works well on cylinders and convex areas but not very well on concave surfaces.) Some are bands filled with many shallow dimples carved with a small egg-shaped cutting tool in a Dremel. One of my favorite techniques is “distressed texturing” where I roughly move a point tool back and forth on the wood which looks great on soft wood such as cedar. The carved holly handles are carved with very small handheld gouges.

I’ve found that on hard, fine grained woods a band of adjacent v-grooves cut with a skew look distinctive since the side of each groove catches the light. The 5th one from the left has these bands.

Dark lines are made with a v-grove cut with a skew then a line burned with a very fine steel wire. I outline almost all textured bands with these friction-burned lines. (Warning: friction lines don’t work well on lignum vitae due to the natural lubricant in the wood!)

When I want to darken something such as the patterns from a texturing tool on smooth wood or the carved grooves I use a soft cloth to rub in dark walnut grain filler then as it dries rub again with a clean cloth to remove any filler on the smooth surfaces or carved highlights. (I’ve been using the same can of grain filler for almost 20 years!) To protect the rest of the wood from the grain filler I first apply a finish or sometimes a finish over sander sealer, often Mylands friction polish on small spindles.

JKJ

[John Kananis]

I was referring to the eighth from the left. So it's carved, hit with walnut filler and sanded. Thank you for that and the explanation on the rest also.

[Mel Fulks]

Not only is the wood beautiful, but the trees are too. The shiny green leaves reflecting light onto the grayish matte bark is a show much
more beautiful than even your relatives home movies of their vacation in Florida.

[Roger Feeley]

I’ve been reading up on harvesting holly and it seems to require fast action.
— once you cut the tree down, the clock starts. You need to get it milled and into the kiln right away or it will discolor to an uninteresting gray.
— the cause of the discoloration seems to be uncertain. Some claim that it’s mold. Others say it’s a chemical reaction.
— everyone agrees that the best time to drop a holly tree is mid winter when the low temperature slows discoloration and sap is minimal.

I reached out to a local sawyer to see what could be done. The plan would be to time it when he can mill it that day and get it into the kiln. That would be a busy day.