Olive wood...

flames · January 30, 2013

Hi, long time no post, thought some of you might find this interesting… would also be interested to hear of anyone else’s experience.

A friend of mine bought some dead Olive trees last Autumn that had to be removed as part of a property sale. Apparently they had been imported from Spain a few years back, the tops had been killed off by the continuous cold a few winters back. The trees were said to be about 300 years old, I can believe that the root stocks were, as they were about 4’ cubed, and solid; but I think the tops were younger.

The wood is really interesting great colours/grain, and the smell is fantastic, but very strange to work with. I rough turned some shortly after removal, left for a few months, then put them in my kiln at about 25-30%MC with a load of other blanks. The kiln had been on for about 2 ½ months, and the contents were at less than 10%MC. The Olive pieces were reading less than a couple of % so I thought I’d finish turn them. It's very strange as most of the wood was bone dry, but there were bands running through it that were still at 15-30% MC, odd thing is that there seems to be distinct boarders between wet and dry areas, not the gradual transition you would expect.