After making the new crook knife, I needed a good test for it. Scrounging around in my wood stash, I found a small block of big leaf maple burl, which has been seasoning for, oh, about 20 years now. It was hard as the dickens, but the crook knife did an excellent job.
It developed a small crack along the way (that’s the nature of burl wood), so I used some silver wire and made staples to hold it shut (along with glue, of course!). I’ve been including “artificed” repairs in much of my work lately, since I like the look, and probably would have done this even if there hadn’t been a real crack…
I also fell back into my bad old netsuke carving habits and put in an antler liner in the cord holes. This is turning into a very high-end noggin. I guess we’ll call it a “gentleman’s” noggin.