African Olivewood

This wood is found mostly in South Africa. It is a gnarly tree that is slow growing. This material is harvested legally through a permit system. It is a very dense, fine grained wood that is wonderful for woodturning and many other uses. Has a pleasant smell. Note that these are high quality pieces without checks or voids, not seconds like most sellers have. Most of our Olivewood is dried (will be marked on the item if dried, except pen blanks which are always dried). This is no simple process. The logs or lumber are allowed to dry for 4-10 years and they crack profusely during the process. We then get an average yeild of 18% from each log that is good enough to make the pieces we sell, and mostly we get pen blanks. Many logs can’t produce a single 2 x 2 x 12. Selling wet olivewood is different and has far lower costs to the seller (but much more trouble for the buyer). To dry a piece that is 2 x 2 x 12 from the wet/waxed state will take at least 3 years of constant humidity above a certain level and a fairly constant temperature. For that reason, the pieces not marked dried are far cheaper since there is about 75% less labor to produce them. Truly dry olivewood is so much trouble to produce that it is rare on the market in these defect free pieces we make. When we say “air dried” or “kiln dried” we mean the wood is known to be at less then 12% moisture. We use 12% moisture as a maximum because in most locales this is dry enough to work immediately. Be aware that most vendors offering “air dry” wood are offering very wet wood, or wood with unknown moisture content.