Corsican Wild Fennel

I ordered a piece of this out of curiosity: http://www.ebay.fr/itm/AIGUISEUR-Bo...rg=20140620080429&rk=2&rkt=10&sd=131292043132. Apparently, Corsican shepherds use it to strop their knives. Makes me wonder about the abrasive properties of other woods used in stropping (e.g., balsa used without paste).

Cool! Or I guess to be more modern. That looks really phat.

bluesman 7 said:

Cool! Or I guess to be more modern. That looks really phat.

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No, fat lightered would have too much resin in it.... LOL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatwood

Hmm. This is interesting. Never heard of this before. Make sure you let us know how it works out.

Only slightly related, what happened to the search function for ebay.fr?

It's working here, but I'm in France. Try it again, maybe it was a temporary glitch.

Alum of Potash said:

It's working here, but I'm in France. Try it again, maybe it was a temporary glitch.

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seems to be a problem restricted to my iPad. fine on the desktop.

I asked the seller if this wood could be applied with pastes. He said the shepherds used it paste-free, due to the facts that they went out to the mountains carrying minimalist equipment and only used natural materials. The seller guesses adding pastes to it like a balsa or a leather paddle is fine, though he never tried this.

Folace said:

I asked the seller if this wood could be applied with pastes. He said the shepherds used it paste-free, due to the facts that they went out to the mountains carrying minimalist equipment and only used natural materials. The seller guesses adding pastes to it like a balsa or a leather paddle is fine, though he never tried this.

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That's what I was thinking as well, although I wanted to try it plain to start to observe what its inherent properties are. I had dinner the other night with a friend who is of Corsican background, and he said that the wild fennel is used a bit like bamboo for cooking on the grill as well. Should arrive sometime this week.

Please keep us updated! I might consider this instead of an expensive paddle.

Folace said:

Please keep us updated! I might consider this instead of an expensive paddle.

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Will do, although you can always glue some balsa to an underlying board for a pittance. The wild fennel arrived today, and it indeed seems a bit like rustic bamboo in terms of lightness. From the exterior, it resembles sugar cane or bamboo. Here are a couple of shots of it:



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Definitely a kind of male fertility totem. ;-) I stropped a knife with it straight away, and this seemed to work well. Linear texture is very nice, although the grain has been raised and can probably benefit from a light sanding, say to around P180-P220 if one was intending to paste it.

Update. Took out a razor that needed a serious touch-up and did a standard preliminary strop on cotton followed by horse-hide. Tried a hanging-hair test. Nada. Stropped for a few dozen laps on the wild fennel. HHT started to improve, especially towards the heel (one-handed bias coming into play here). Stropped for several dozen more laps, emphasizing the toe. Subsequent HHT was severing cleanly, all along the edge.

Really makes me wonder if leaving those balsa strops unpasted might not be worthwhile. And after so many laps, the raised grain here has started to smooth. Interesting thing is that the soft wood is compartmentalized by parallel walls (annual ring growths?) which are a bit harder, suggesting that it won't deform due to humidity changes. This may take the place of scoring balsa wood lengthwise to relieve wood movement there.

Edit. This being a rustic, natural product, absolute flatness is not to be expected. Familiarity with the rolling-X stroke will come in handy. Place the far end of the wood on a counter to support and stabilize it before going to town!

Very interesting post Alan, thank you for posting. I may have to try some of this!

Cheers, Steve

Be curious to see what was changing under the scope.

SliceOfLife said:

Be curious to see what was changing under the scope.

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14x Hastings triplet's the limit here. We'll see what the shave is like before returning to the stone, as needed.

So How was the shave off the fennel strop?

Being part of the Corsican diaspora myself I have to say I am extremely interested and will be ordering one promptly. Thanks for sharing the discovery.

Done. Unfortunately the checkout did not let me choose a delivery address in the US so I'll have to get it muled to me. So I'll have to wait until December.

Jayber Crow said:

So How was the shave off the fennel strop?

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First shave straight off the fennel was fine. After the shave, I did around 12 laps on cotton, 30 on leather to clean the blade, then followed with 30 more laps on the fennel. Next shave seemed too sharp, and a following shave with leather didn't seem to help. So right now, I'm inclined to treat it like a pasted strop. Maybe 30 laps max., if that, and no more, followed by leather. With continued use, the wood does seem to be smoothing over nicely though. And while the surface twists a bit, it's easy to follow and use.

totorlekiller said:

Being part of the Corsican diaspora myself I have to say I am extremely interested and will be ordering one promptly. Thanks for sharing the discovery.

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totorlekiller said:

Done. Unfortunately the checkout did not let me choose a delivery address in the US so I'll have to get it muled to me. So I'll have to wait until December.

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Glad you found out about it. Last I looked, the shipping worldwide did not exclude the U.S. And now I notice that he's come out with a super-sized version for 12 euros. Mine is approximately 1-1/2" wide, so it really is sort of like one of those Solingen loom or paddle strops (although I find this one easier to use for some reason).