I have turned a few calls from olive. It is kind of oily and buttery smooth to turn and has a wonderful fragrance. It has beautiful figure to it. Here's some I have in the works right now. Thought maybe I'd do a 3 call set with an open and closed reed and a crow call or maybe a bite reed call. Dale
My father in law has built quite a bit of small furniture out of the Russian Olive tree's wood. It's a beautiful hardwood that has lots of browns and deep greens in it. Like C latrans said it has beautiful figure.
Russian olive has a nice wood also, but is not related to olive. The botanical name of russian olive is Eleagnus angustifolia and most olive that is used is Oleo europa. Intersting side note is that the fruit of russian olive is also edible but has a mealy texture but grouse and some other birds sure love them. Dale
speaking of russian olive wood ; i'd like to get some does anybody know where i can get it. no i dont want to start to make calls just thought i'd get some and hold it till i decide what to do with it.
From my research we have some olive wood here in the states and most of it comes from California. I haven't been very impressed with the grain on the limited pieces I've seen though. There's also some African Olive wood that I've run across and it's just a slight step above the California Olive. Probably the most widely available Olive wood is European Olive. It has some pretty good figuring and is moderately priced. But, the best I've run across comes out of Jerusalem or Bethlehem. They advertise these trees are so old that it's quite possible they were around during Jesus' days. The company I've dealt with to get it is called Bethlehem Olive Wood. I've only made two orders with them and the first one I got in short order and with no problems. The second time I ordered, I had beau coup hassles and ended up filing complaints through the Attorney General's office for Internet fraud. I did eventually get my wood, but only after several expensive long distance calls to Bethelem. I'm not sure if I'll order from them again, but they do have some great pieces of wood. Here's a few calls I made with some of the stock I got from my first order when I was making calls. They say the older the wood is the better the grain and the darker, as well. I really like working olive. It smells great, polishes like a mirror and is pretty durable. I hope I'll be able to get back to turning calls one of these days and use the 24 blanks I have sitting in the shop. There's some great pieces in this order.
While you are at get a little exrta and have it shipped to me. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif Just kidding got a couple of sticks of it last week, nice wood but pricey /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused1.gif
If you went to the Woodcrafter's in Boise check near the back by the saw blades. A couple of weeks ago they had a bucket of Desert Ironwood they were getting rid of a pretty good prices. I bought a couple of nice slabs, but there were some other good ones in there. You might come up with a good lamination with that Olive you got.