McLaughlin's Beautiful Fingerprint Magnet

[krinko]

I am not a knife collector but I did collect this one when it came to the shop---



It's a real bear to photograph, what with my lack of patience and improvised equipment*, so please bear with me. (*yes, I blamed my tools.)



I found two McLaughlins in the Montana Knife Makers Association membership list, but I don't know if this is the Missoula, Montana or Liberty Lake, Washington branch---or some other McLaughlin altogether.



At first I thought this was some kind of burl wood---but after putting the loupe to it, it looks more like horn. It's got lamination and flaws that remind me of a horn handled French sailor's knife I left sitting on an amplifier forty years ago...
Anyway, if anyone can ID the grip material, I'd appreciate it.
-----krinko

 

[kBob]

Whatever it is I do like the look of it. Might we see and edge on of its back so we can see how that sort of spyperCo knotching on the blade looks like from above?

Wood actually it reminds me of an extinct Birds Eye Pine which died out in the South East about 1900 from over harvesting......of course the reason it looks so dark in the houses in North Florida, south Georgia and Alabama is the 100+years of various refinishing so I am guessing something else. On the other hand if it was salvage from a destruction project...... Personally I have to believe there are a few of the trees somewhere who's great grand parents got missed and feel UF or Georgia or them Alabama Stump jumpers Ag departments aught to be hunting for them. Pretty wood.

When I was about 12 I helped my PaPa (Mom's dad) take apart a couple of 1890s houses and anytime I started to rip out some thing new he would slice it open with a jig saw to see what the wood under four or five layers of paint or finish looked like. Never found any of the Bird's Eye Pine, but have seen it in houses used as museums such as at The Georgia Agrarama.

PaPa was raised on the Apalachicola River (lower Chattahoochee after Eufalla and Flint join it and form Lake Seminole, well Jim Woodruff Dam actually forms the lake...) and his father was a timber walker and raft man (floated harvested logs down to the mill in Apalachicola in the spring). When PaPa moved to Madison he planted a Torrea Tree (Gopher Wood) tree in his yard dug up from near his Dads farm. As it is between the same such trees in a grave yard about 100 yards away and an old ag agents house about 200 yards away in another direction the local tree nuts insist it is from that ag agent. Of course they never spoke to him while he was alive and never mowed around it as a kid and got stuck by its "needles" and told stories of its finding digging up and replanting.....but what do I know? Because of this tree some locals along that section of river thought the Garden of Eden was in the area. Never seen any flaming swords around there though........

-kBob

 

[hso]

kind of burl wood

Desert Ironwood.

 

[Odd Job]

That is really nice!