New Lathe Owner.

[pwdrive]

One of the nicest woods to turn is yew, which is very close grained and takes a nice finish, and has very distinctive heartwood and sapwood, which made it prized for English longbows - the 'WMD' of their day. It's strong in compression and tension, but isn't very tough for such things as tool handles.

Perhaps you could tell the TV and Film Companies as the actors are shown nine times out of ten with a Red Indian flat bow. I expect they go round to the Props Dept. and are issued with 'Bow' - idiots.

On the subject of wood if you know of a source of real Ash Spade Handles - Forkandles - let me know. I don't know what they use these days but Ash it aint. I've got an old spade that belonged to my Dad. The blade is only about 8" long now, but the Handle is solid. I keep breaking the modern ones and it's not surprising when you look at the grain.

Alan

Hello Alan, I havn't researched where in general but you can get them, I got one for my cornish long handled shovel a while back locally, nice grain and ash, hickory is good too but I reckon ash has a better balance, I agree, some of the gardening stuff these days is pure cr*p, my missis bought an all steel rake, the damn thing wears you out after an hour or so, to heavy and not balanced, same goes for stainless all metal spades, usless I say, the best spade ever made was the Spear and Jackson general purpose trenching shovel, 28" ash tee handle 8" wide blade, blade when new about 10" long and pointed, top of blade bent over at a right angle so you can realy get some serious foot stomping pressure on it without cutting yer boots in half, unparalled balance, the load wears you out not the shovel, slices through ground like nothing, these were standard army issue on the back of lightwieght and 101 landrovers. You can still buy them. (End of promo.)

I have always found the best places for handles is a general surplus type hardware place or a good agricultural merchants, they usually have them loose in a barrel or container and you can check out the species and grain before parting with any money.
Hope you find one ok, 'nowt worse than not fit for pupose tools.

Lawrence.