Burl Source

The purpose of Burl Source is to provide the best quality burl and highly figured woods that I can find,  and prepare it to be used  for knife handle material. The woods available in our webstore come from all over the world. Our stabilized woods are professionally stabilized by Knife and Gun Finishing Supply in Arizona.

Visit our Web Store

Our web store contains hundreds of pieces of beautiful and unusual figured woods prepared especially with the custom knife maker in mind. Most of the wood in our store has been professionally stabilized with the exception of a few extremely durable hardwoods.

Every piece in the store is individually photographed with large photos showing both sides of the wood. You get to see exactly what you will be getting.

Everything in the store comes with a No questions asked, money back guarantee.

Free Priority Mail Shipping Worldwide.

 What you will find here

The purpose of this site is to provide information about the different types of wood we sell for handle materials. Lots of photos showing really nice pieces of wood as well.

• Wood Information
• Photo Gallery of Knives using our wood
  
• Directory of Custom Knife Makers
  

What is Stabilized Wood?

Wood that is correctly stabilized for knife handle material is impregnated with a chemical stabilizing agent that infuses the fiber of the wood and then turns into a solid when it is cured. The purpose of the stabilizing is to make the wood much more durable than it would be naturally, and to lessen the chance of the wood shrinking or expanding. This helps to prevent handle material warping of cracking.

The process for stabilizing wood for use as knife handle material is as follows;
Blocks of dry wood are placed into a tank.
The tank is sealed and placed under a vacuum.
The stabilizing agent is released into the tank which is kept under a vacuum.
After a designated amount of time the vacuum is released and the tank is pressurized.
When done properly the stabilizing agent completely infuses the wood fiber.
Next the infused blocks undergo a curing process.
This curing process changes the stabilizing agent from a liquid into a solid.

This is how it is done with professional wood stabilizing for knife handle materials.  We use K&G (Knife & Gun Finishing Supply) for all of our wood stabilizing.