Thread: Basswood Blocks for carving

Great thread guys. This would make a good reverence thread . Maybe a sticky!

gday mates newby here ,fruit wood is a woodcarvers dream,pear,plum,lemon,apple,sometimes its nice and soft others hard as rock.i just cover newly cut branches with aquadere and let dry

Balsa does not have the typically fibrous wood anatomy that you would normally expect.
Under a microscope, balsa has a very foam-like anatomy, composed primarily of rounded and thin-walled cells.
With little fibrous support, the "wood" collapses when cut in the transverse direction.
Put it away, give it away, chalk it up to experience = it is not carving wood, despite ignorant claims to the contrary.

Jelutong is the South Pacific answer to basswood.

I think you will find that balsa and basswood are not the same.Basswood is a great white wood ,balsa is as you say no good for carving.

Of course. Balsa is Ochroma pyramidale and as such, is quite unrelated to North American Basswood = Tilia americana. The little-leaf linden is native to europe, T. cordata.
European Lime is likely T. vulgaris or the rare native T. platyphyllos. Add to that, a bunch of recorded hybrids with T. europaea.

Even within North America, there is considerable difference in the carving quality of northern basswood (excellent) when compared with the same species from the south (poor/hard).
I use local/native woods: western red cedar (Thuja plicata), Yellow cedar (Chamycyparis nootkatensis) and birch (Betula papyrifera) is my favorite hardwood.

Living in GB. I've always heard that that European Lime (Tilia Vulgaris) is the very best of this family for carving purposes.
I have carved a ton of it from many different European sources & must say that at it's best it is indeed an absolute delight to carve BUT it has become the norm to get poor second grade stuff sold as carving blanks. It is very noticeable both visually & in it's working properties.
Recently I picked up a small piece of Basswood because it looked really good & it was indeed the equal of any Lime/Linden I've ever used - Despite the received wisdom !
You can only conclude that the quality of the timber is the most important factor , yet when we are buying relatively little pieces , we are at the mercy of the supplier .
Find a good one & stick with him ! Pay a bit extra to guarantee that he has selected a good piece for your carving blank.
It comes down his honesty & integrity at the end of the day , the more he pays for the timber & the more he throws away when cutting it up the less money he makes BUT the higher quality blanks he sells .
Mike

Sound advice, Mike. Other carvers may be reluctant to "give up" their preferred source.
Heineke is the gold standard for carving basswood in the United States.

What you call second rate may in fact be branch wood which has tougher tension wood (reaction wood), a somewhat different anatomy
from the vertical main stem of the tree.