Does anyone know if there is a good place online to order rosewood dowels? I have a friend who wants to carve knitting needles from them, but having no luck finding a supplier.
Thanks for any and all help!

Donna

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

Hi Donna...put 'rosewood dowels' in a google search, lots of them there, most I think are large dowels though...might help. ???

Hi Ho, I tried the Google search...all I found were false leads. They had rosewood, and they had dowels, but not rosewood dowels. Did you find anything interesting that I might have missed?
Thanks a bunch for your help!

Donna

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

I found East Indian rosewood, and rosewood dowels, but everything was large sizes and some were quantity purchases??

Hi Donna,
Do you know anyone that could possibly turn some rosewood for you on a lathe? I have a mini lathe and you can do some pretty small turning on it. I make pens on it, but have not tried knitting needles. I have carved crochet hooks from my pen blanks and the thicker end makes it easier to crochet. I have drilled a hole in the end of a pen blank and glued a cut off tip from a crochet hook and then carved it. You can buy wood pen blanks on ebay and they may have some rosewood ones available. Look on ebay for carved crochet hooks maybe they have knitting needles and then you could get some ideas from there.
Barb

[rick-in-seattle]

Your best bet would be having them turned.

[AlArchie]

www.leevalley.com and

www.rockler.com (I think)

Both sell dowell making DIES. A square piece of stock is driven through the die, and out comes a dowell. You can use whatever kind of wood you want. I haven't tried these, but it would be a lot easier than trying to turn a long, whippy piece on a lathe, especially if you don't have a good steady rest.

You can purchase these dies in just about any size you need. All you have to do is rip the wood to the rough size suggested, and make all the dowell rods you need.

Al

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

you can take a piece of steel plate, drill a hole in it and put a piece of wood a little larger and drive it thru the hole and it will make a uniform size...indians did that with their arrows thru a hole in a rock. don't know if you would have much luck on a lathe with something that small a diameter and that long? But you might shape the wood with your carving tools until you get close to size...leave them a bit long and chuck them up in your drill and put sandpaper to them at a slow speed... there are different ways to skin a cat.........errr sorry Nancy