Pistachio Trivet

incredible wood jim !

Man... that's gorgeous!  EEE? ... you mean EEE-Ultra Shine Polish... right?
It amazes me how so many here use wood I've never heard of or not able to obtain. Pistachio? I eat the nuts but didn't know you could get wood big enough for woodworking. 

Plant the nuts! 🤠

Beautiful!

Cool chunk of wood Jim.

My Grandmas brother Jimmy was a tinkerer of great order, for a living he witched wells, and cleaned out hives, bee or wasp, didn't matter, the bees he would house in wooden hives, and resell to bee keepers, or keep them himself. I guess bee keeper was a part time job for him too. No kidding these were the jobs he did all of his life. His hobby was to graft trees, mostly fruit, to try to make all kinds of different fruits. Most were sort of Frankenstein monsters of the tree world, but some took hold, and made some tasty things. He came by the hobby honestly, as Grannies entire family line from South Western Ky, made a living growing grasses, and they were responsible for what is today Fescue 31. A pretty rich bunch they were. :-)

Just saying that because some of the Frankenstein wood was pretty wonderful. A lot of people who do work with fruit woods will understand this, as alone some are pretty showy. Mixed they can get wild. By the time I was coming around, he had been at grafting for a lifetime already, and had several hundred acres of land with a lot of "goofy" trees. As a youngster I would help them clear some of it, and most of the time we cut up the trees to see what kind of wood we could find. The centers, or graft lines, were also what we would normally call the "Pith" was where the action was. So the worst wood for working with, but some of it was pretty neat to look at.

Interesting piece.  Spectacular wood.

That a beautiful piece Jim!

Very cool.

Thank you all for the nice comments. I love building unique things out of all different kinds of wood. I have to do a lot of explaining at craft shows to get the customers to appreciated the wood and what I had to do to get it where it was.
Hi Rick...yes it is EEE wood polish...a play on the word Tripoli- triple E. I sand to 400 and the EEE brings it to about 2000.

Hi George! That is quite a story about Jimmy!! I can relate to him! My dad always grafted apple trees. We had many trees with 5 kinds of apples on the same tree. I am always surprised when I see all the different wood at the Dead Tree Salvage saw mill in Casa Grande. I originally went there for mesquite and pecan. Now he has pistachio, olive, eucalyptus, bottle brush tree, willow acacia,  jacaranda , iron wood and some others that I forgot. If you are ever in Arizona , look up John Goodwin at the saw mill.
He is at 11930 W Martin Rd. In Casa Grande.
 Call first because John is out of town a lot shopping for trees ( 520 566 0763 )
Cheers, Jim

Beautiful wood!

Any idea what kind of tree they use for the root stock?  

Jim I will definitely try to see him if ever in the neighborhood. I love that stuff. 

Nathan, graft stock works best if you stay apple to apple, orange to orange. like that. Among any one type of fruit there are dominants and recessives. In apples most trees that are considered "hybrids" are all grafted from 2 apple varieties. Red Delicious is a grafted tree, but is also a dominant, so would be a good choice, since we are a lot heavier apple country, than peach or orange up here, I'm not too sure about others. I'm sure it's on the web. Jimmie was a wildcat though, and he would go after crazy stuff like a Pecherrange, he had a lot of them. Peaches, with Cherry, and Orange, it was like his biggest wish, and none of the individuals  fruited, worth snot up here due to both early frosts, and late thaws. Strange thing was his propagators were strong, so he could grow the trees, they just never grew much fruit, and when he did it was often not what you thought it might be. He made a lot of wine, when he did make fruit. NOT talking about any fermentation process, but fortified wine, of not so great fruit juices, mixed with Brandy or some other strong Liquor. Strong Men might be able to drink it, not I. It would easily clear your sinuses though. 

Very nice appearance, looks great.

Generally true, George, but the most important thing is that the root stock has to be adapted to the soil conditions.  In that case they may use the closest related species that will grow in the those conditions and they often find a tree native tot he area.  Most peach varieties for example need relatively acid soil so if you want to grow them where you have alkaline soil, you may have to chose a root stock from another native tree adapted to the local soil conditions.   It also needs to grow in diameter at a similar rate.  I had a white cultivar of redbud tree that was grafted onto native redbud root stock.  The tree ultimately died (<10 years) because the root stock grew much faster than than the graft.  When I cut it down, I cut the trunk in half and I could see where the cambium layer had pretty much severed at the graft.  The base was nearly twice as large below the graft as it was above.   I know that the root stock was a redbud because it sprouted and I now have true redbud tree growing there.  

The reason I asked is because the grain of the wood is so different above and below the graft it made me wonder what they used.  

That’s the beautiful result of a collaboration between you, whoever did the grafting, and Mother Nature. It’s a very striking piece.

In general Ohio is fertile, and most things grow here provided they fall into the temps ranges. In a Tx neighborhood I am not sure where they haul in fill from, but it is a largely arid state, and a lot of what freely grows there is pretty scrappy stuff. Redbud are specific need, and we have scads of them. However they all grow self selected, and wild. You see them all along the freeways, tucked into wooded hills. Planted they are as stubborn as a planting can be.

Dad had about the greenest thumb of anyone I knew in my life, and he wanted a redbud in his yard something awful. He never could get one to grow, in his richly tended soil, Mothering them until they died. When Peg and I built in the country at the first "place" I threw one into a planting I popped in around the well head. Dad said it will never grow there, too crowded. Took off like a corn sprout. That thing is still right there, just dominating that planting, and has killed off all other growth I had in there, probably 40 feet tall, and 30 wide, truly a beauty. 

The biggest difference I could see beyond total indifference, was my soil was just the heavily fertilized farmland from our build site which had been farmed for centuries. I think it's all about them growing where they darn well please, rather than being able to coax them into being where you want them. 

Thanks Ryan, Nathan, George,Tom and Ron !!
Hi Nathan, not so much in this piece, but it other pieces I bought from that dead orchard, the root stock looked just like female pistachio with the pink pistachio grain. I'm guessing the root stock was pistachio.
A few years back we scored a bit hit with  about 40 chestnut trunks that a guy at the orchard gave to us and we took them to the mill here in Michigan. He cut the trees to about 18" left above the ground and grafted Korean chestnut branches to the Asian chestnut root stock because the yield from the Korean trees was a whole lot better .
Cheers, Jim

Here is a piece I did from some of the grafted pistachio I bought earlier and it looks to be the same species on top and bottom. I'm not sure if this was from that orchard full he brought in from California like the above piece.

Pistachio Charcutereie Board Jim Jakosh

Pistachio is just astonish!