#1453 - 7 Wood - ALL+/OFF-
All the layers in this blade were "cooked" before gluing, it's a fully thermo treated blade, which I believe I've never seen before, but to be honest, I don't think I will make again. I've spoken about thermo treated wood before, but let me do a quick summary. When you cook wood past a certain point, you force out all the residual moisture it has, the inner vessels shrink and do not return to their original size. This makes the wood much more resistant to environmental changes, and that's the reason why you see it being used so much in outdoor furniture, or pieces that don't require a big structural response. Why? Because the wood also loses a lot of structural integrity, it becomes very brittle, meaning it breaks much more easily and without warning (it doesn't bend before it breaks). In TT blades, I've seen more broken thermo treated cores than anything else for example. I'm always honest about the blades that I post here, and frankly this blade turned out slower than what it was supposed too. It is a little lighter, given that the Ayous I used was very dense to begin with, but that's also an important thing I want to mention.
I usually hear people say: "wood must be as dry as possible", and that's really not true. Wood must be as dry as possible, for the intent it's being used and the environment it will be exposed, otherwise it will just absorb moisture from the environment to reach a new equilibrium and warp... The wood I normally use is already at a relatively low moisture content, usually 5-8%, so the weight gain we have by making it 0-1%, for me does not make up for the structural integrity we lose.
So yeah, this blade feels slower than what it was supposed to because the wood lost elasticity, there isn't that snap, the ball just kinda stays there... But here's the silver lining, the ball just stays there, which means it has a fantastic dwell time. The feeling is also a bit different, it's soft but dry, kinda hard to explain... All in all, a very unique blade.
By the way, all the things I've stated that make it a disadvantage to use thermo treated wood in the composition, make it perfect to use in the handle. Normally I don't use Ayous in handles because it's too light colored, which means it gets dirty quickly. It's also soft, so it absorbs a lot of moisture and gets soggy if you sweat a lot. The thermo treatment solves all these issues, and in this case the loss of structural integrity isn't an issue. The lightness of the material allows me to keep the handle fully solid, and capable to absorb all the bending forces. So, you will be seeing a few more handles like this. I almost burnt my house down, but it was totally worth it 😂.
- Limba / Ayous / Ayous / Ayous //
- 89.3g
- 6.2mm
- 150x157mm
- ST (23.0x28.5x100mm)
- Balance: 3.5cm (Med)
