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Received a gift: raw olivewood

L

lowerthetone

Jun 10, 2012
19
0
The Netherlands
#1
Hi there,

A few days back I received this gift: a root and trunk of a dead olivetree. The tree is dead for almost a year. The diameter of the log is about 6"/ 15 cm and the log is 27.5"/ 70 cm long.

The root burl is about 20" / 51cm long and 17" / 43 cm wide.

I really love olivewood and love the wild grains and colors, so I would love to use this wood. I would like to know if it's possible and worth it to get the wood properly sawn and dried.

I looked into drying raw wood, but don't know what to do with this particular wood. I read olivewood is very dense and oily, and easily cracks in the drying proces.

The trunk looks really solid, no cracks. Because olivewood is very oily and dense, could this wood be used as blanks for a fingerboard, once properly sawn and dried?

The burl seems to be spalted and I spotted some cracks at the sawn-off top. Is this now considered useless? I now spalted wood can be very interseting. I would love to use olivewood as a top wood for solidbody instruments.

If this pieces are to small for instrument building, I can maybe receive wood from trees wich are double the size in the future. Is it worth it holding on to those? I've added some pictures of the wood. Thanks.

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#2
I'm no expert but I think there is probably a market for it. You'll need to do a little research is all.

Whatever you do, you really need to have it through a saw mill (sawn up) and dried properly in blanks. Until you do that, you won't know what will crack and what won't. I reckon you should expect to let it dry for a number of years without kiln drying. Having it kiln dried will quicken that but cost more. Either way, the sooner you do that the better. Coz in the mean time, it will dry unevenly and move all over the place.

Can't comment on burls, but a local timber mill should be able to give you some advice on what to do.
 
#5
Don't know anything about olivewood but that burl sure looks like it will be beautiful if you can find someone to saw it into slabs for you.Also in general the rule is to let wood cure for at least 1 year for every inch of thickness,more than 3 or 4 inches thickness,even longer time
 
#7
Thanks for the tips!

I've spoken to a carpenter who told me that it the wood could be soaked in (boiling) water to wash out the woodsap. I read this on the internet as well. Would this be beneficial in this situation? I have my doubts about because I think that the wood is already in the drying process, looking at the cracks...

I did found a few local millers, so I guess I should give them a call...
 
#8
Be sure to seal up the end grain asap, because that's where the cracks
begin and continue from.
I've got some Seagrape that I had for a while before I found that out,
and it (like it wants to anyway) cracked as it dried from the ends
before I was able to saw it into planks with a chainsaw-
no mills around here, and logs were too large.
Wish I'd known that beforehand.
 

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