Set of Eight East Indian Rosewood Bowls

I have written at length about East Indian Rosewood in the past, so this will just be an update regarding the latest project that I have completed.

Since I last wrote about East Indian Rosewood it and ALL members of the Dalbergia genus, all true Rosewoods, have been placed under the protection of CITES Appendix 2 which means that East Indian Rosewood can no longer be imported or exported, including finished items.  When I found out that this ruling was coming down, I purchased a set of bowl blanks in fear that East Indian Rosewood would soon become unavailable.  Fortunately for wood turners who favor rosewood, large stocks of East Indian Rosewood had been imported before the CITES ruling took effect and even today it is easy and relatively affordable to source East Indian Rosewood, but if you are interested in this wood, I would error on the side of caution and purchase your stocks sooner rather than later since there will not be more coming.

East Indian Rosewood Set of 8

I had good experiences with East Indian Rosewood in the past and this was no exception.  East Indian Rosewood cuts quite cleanly and requires little finish sanding to achieve a very high natural luster.  Because East Indian Rosewood is quite naturally oily I wasn’t sure what, if any, finish to try.  In the past, I used Teak Oil and had a decent experience with that and I did use Teak Oil on most of these bowls.  I also tried one with plain carnauba wax and two with Shellawax.  I am hard pressed to identify which is which at this point so I think it fair to say that all of the final finishes were satisfactory but I did find that I preferred Shellawax which isn’t a surprise since I have long relied on that product as my final finish.

Because East Indian Rosewood is so oily, I chose to use Abranet sanding screens instead of traditional sandpaper for the early phases of sanding.  Oily woods will gum up traditional sandpaper in seconds, rendering it practically useless but Abranet screens don’t clog easily and if they do a quick blast from the air compressor will resolve the issue.  Abranet is a great choice for any material but it is especially useful with oily woods like East Indian Rosewood.

East Indian Rosewood Stack

Overall, I was quite pleased with the experience of working with East Indian Rosewood again and I suspect that I have more still hidden in the stacks of turning wood I have accumulated over the years.  I highly recommend East Indian Rosewood to all wood turners, but as I noted, act fast to avoid disappointment since this wood is no longer imported.

All cuts were made using the Easy Wood Tool system on my Robust American Beauty lathe.  Forward chucking was in a Nova Chuck, while reverse chucking was done using a Nova Chuck with Cole Jaws.  Sanding was with Abranet sanding discs from Packard Woodworks.  Final finish is Shellawax.

As always, I wish all my readers a great experience in whatever your wood working interests happen to be and to those who like working with lathes especially, do a good turn today!