Unique Piece of Stabilized Koa Wood-Block

Size: 1.8″ x 1.9″ x 9″-  This block is large enough for 4-6 sets of knife handle scales or a couple of large turning blanks. 

Color:  The pictured piece is the actual piece you will receive.  There is a small live edge about 1/4″ deep by 2″ long on one corner of the block.

***Stabilized professionally by K&G Stabilizing

Stabilizing has many advantages. Stabilizing allows the user to use a piece of wood/material that normally may be too soft or fragile to be used. Stabilizing will minimize or totally eliminate; shrinking, cracking, expanding and warping. Stabilized wood/material will not absorb water, impervious to oils, will not produce a raised grain when sanded and polished.

About Koa Wood: The word “Koa” means “warrior” in Hawaiian. Koa is the best known of the endemic Hawaiian woods. It is recognized world wide for it’s remarkable variety of grain figure which ranges from plain, to curly, to deep fiddleback. The color can go from reds to chocolate browns, with the sap wood sometimes even a bleached white. The grain is fine and the texture medium coarse, but it is the figuring that sets Koa into a class of it’s own.
Chatoyancy is a property that is usually attributed to certain gems, the cats eye effect or shimmer which gives a senseof depth in the gem. This property can also be used to describe some of the more dramatic pieces of curly, tigerstripe and fiddleback Koa. This figuring gives the wood a three dimensional quality; and depending on from what angle one views the wood, it can take on several completely different characters.
In pre-western contact times Koa was used to build canoes, spears and paddles. The canoes were carved out of a single tree, which was carefully chosen, spiritually and physically for the purpose. Today Koa is valued for furniture, guitars, boxes, paneling and bowl turning. It is interesting to note that Hawaiians of earlier times did not use it for bowls or platters because of an unpleasant flavor associated with the wood.