4th of July Weekend Schedule-

Just wanted to remind everyone that we WILL be open this Saturday (July 2nd) during regular store hours 9:30-1:00.

We will be closed Sunday and Monday all day but will reopen the shop on Tuesday (July 5th)

Here is the schedule for the upcoming long holiday weekend-

Fri. July 1st-8:30-4:30
Sat. July 2nd-9:30-1:30
Sun. July 3rd-CLOSED
Mon. July 4th-CLOSED
Tue. July 5th-8:30-4:30

Please feel free to call us if you have any other questions or click here for directions to our warehouse. 760.434.3030

Hope to see you at the shop on Saturday!

Pieces by Barry Robin

Orange County native, Barry Robin has been a woodworker for close to 40 years.

Barry's introduction to fine woodworking came as a yacht carpenter, apprenticing under Don Fredrickson in Newport Beach. Wood turning and furniture design grew out of a need to express himself artistically while spending days in the engineering world.

Here are some amazing pieces by Barry out of wood purchased here at TEH. Most pieces are made using our high grade Mexican Cocobolo* and other hard to find species from around the world.

Amazing craftsmanship and design, don't you think?

*Several of Barry's jewelry boxes pictured below are made using some of our rare extra-wide pieces of Mexican Cocobolo.

To view some individual piece of extra-wide cocobolo listed on our online store, please click here.

Above is a gorgeous jewelery box out of Cocobolo.

Here is some wall art using Padouk and Pau Amarello (Yellowheart)

Bloodwood and Myrtle turned piece.

Another amazing jewelery box out of Cocobolo.

Parota hall table.

For more on Barry Robin and his artwork, please visit his website-

studiorobin.biz

Click here to view more finished pieces by our customers. 

Neat Bocote Guitar Sides

While going through our stack of Bocote musical stock, came across about 5 sets of Bocote sides with this neat figure!
Unique looking stuff!

Oldies but Goodies...

Neat little collection of 35 year old Cocobolo woodworking tools.
Made from TEH supplied wood back when the company was first starting out in the 1970's.
Proud to still be supplying the woodworking community with quality exotics after all these years.

Curly Lytchee-Nice Looking Stuff!

Here is a hidden gem in the world of exotic woods-

Indonesian curly lytchee is by far one the most exciting woods we carry here at our shop.

It's something about the grain and figure of this exotic that makes it a favorite among our longtime customers.

A relatively dense exotic, lytchee has a warm red-orange colored grain with hints of spalting and gorgeous curly figure.

At only $18/BF it is also a great competitively priced option when compared to other figured woods such as Koa and Macassar Ebony.

The picture above is of some of the stock we have in the back of the warehouse. Widths of over 6" are not uncommon and all the pieces are a nice full 1" thick!




The beauty of lytchee really comes out once you clean it up and add a little finish. Here are three pieces pictured above we ran through the thickness planer and sprayed with alcohol.

Pretty nice, huh?

Think curly lytchee is something you might want to try?

Click here to purchase online, or feel free to give us a call (760.434.3030) if you want to learn more about this species.

Another rare extra wide piece of Cocobolo finds a home!

As many of you know, we have a large supply of extra-wide cocobolo  in a variety of dimensions, but certain select pieces just stand out among the rest.

This pretty piece pictured above, measures 2" thick x nearly 16" wide x 60" long. What really makes this piece unique is the fact that it has no sap wood and hardly any defects.

Mexican cocobolo is a relatively small tree that grows to about 12-15" in diameter max including the center pith. Trees this size will typically only yield lumber 4-9" after cutting around any defects.

Can you imagine the size log needed to get a 16" wide clean piece of cocobolo?!

Click here to see other pieces we have in stock

More pictures of the unique Cocobolo boards!

As much as we try to get back to work, we just can't take our eyes off of these pieces!

Can you blame us?!

How would you use these unique pieces?

Musical instruments, jewelry boxes, cabinets?

Every customer that has come into the shop to look at these pieces has a different idea on how to utilize the intense grain and color.

What would you use them for?

Visit our online store to see what we have in stock. 

Ever seen cocobolo like this???

Mother nature is messing with us again!

Mexican Kingwood

We have been milling a bunch of Kingwood recently for a client overseas and as a result have a lot if neat pieces left over that were either too short or too thin for his order.
If you are into making custom knife handles, pens, or small boxes, this high end rosewood is a great species to work with.
Feel free to drop by the shop or visit our online store to see if any of the pieces may work for you.

Parota and other slabs.

Well, our walls are starting to clear up!

We've sold quite a few Parota slabs recently thanks to all of you, but...

don't worry, we still have more. Don't miss out on these beautiful pieces.

(Perfect sizes for coffee tables, dining tables and large conference room tables!)

How about our Koa slabs? Still have some nice small flitch cut pieces!

And these beauties? A few slabs of Camphor wood.

Check out the difference once you sand them!

Don't forget about our lumber...

How about our Holly and Lytchee (just to name a couple), still have plenty of nice material!

We're at the shop tomorrow, Saturday, so feel free to call us, or stop by.

Neat pieces found on a road trip to Northern California...

We always have our feelers out there looking for unique pieces of wood for all our customers.

Whether it's highly figured pieces of rosewood , uniquely shaped tabletop slabs, or old dusty stashes of wood sitting in forgotten lumber yards, we always get a kick out of finding those "ugly ducklings" that are just begging to be made into beautiful pieces of art.

Although we usually have a healthy supply of "fireplace mantle" stock here at the shop and on the "slabs page" of our website, very thick and dry material (4-6") is sometimes a hard one to find.

We found these four pieces pictured below on a recent road trip up to Northern California. They All bone dry with unique texture on the natural edge. Will look amazing as distressed fireplace mantels.




Here are the three big ones, from left to right-

Pine-6" x 11.5-19" x 97"
Live Oak-5.5" x 8-14" x 85"
Redwood-6.5" x 9" x 100"



Real nice natural edges on all these pieces!




Here is the "little" one-

Figured Claro Walnut-5" x 10-12" x 63"


Give us a call if any of these interest you (760.434.3030) or look for them to be listed on our website within the week

Tasmanian Rose Myrtle Burl

Turning stock in a variety of sizes.
Not to be confused with domestic myrtle, Tas. Rose Myrtle is a highly figured species that looks great in a various different projects.
Have you tried Rose Myrtle before?
What do you think?

Cocobolo Turned Piece by Gary Boer

Customer Gary Boer came by the shop to pick up some more cocobolo and to show us one of his latest pieces.

Very good looking piece out of some of our highly figured cocobolo.

Thanks Gary for dropping by!

To see our customer gallery, please click here.

Parota Exterior Gate

At the shop today...

Our clearance rack... Nice and tidy!

(Always nice to re-organize those odd pieces of wood remaining from previous batches)

Our cut-off bin... Looking healthy!

(We've done some milling and cleaning at the shop and there are all sort of pieces here!)

Turning squares... Ready to be packaged!

(A lot of you have already taken advantage of our "June Special" 1.5", 2.0" and 3.0" packages with free shipping)

Not to forget... Our Clearance Macassar Ebony bundles!

(Conveniently packaged up and attractively priced for all sort of projects).

Check out our website, our Online Store, call us, or simply stop by the shop!

A friendly reminder to visit the "Design in Wood" exhibit at the 2011 San Diego County Fair. Opening day is today, Friday, June 10th!

Looks like all of you have been liking the" June Special" (...we may have to make them permanent online items!)

Great response to this month's "Free Shipping" Cocobolo turning square bundles featured in the June TEH newsletter!

Can't beat high grade Mexican Cocobolo with shipping included to anywhere in the USA (including Hawaii & Alaska!)

Above are some images of some bundles we are getting ready to package this morning and some that are ready to be sent out to a handful of lucky customers across the USA. (Send us some images of your finished pieces, we would love to see them!)

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Before & After- Bookmatched Parota Dining Table by Phil Audia

Here are some before and after pictures of Phil's recently completed dining room table for a client in Los Angeles, California.

Phil needed to create a tabletop roughly 6' wide and over 10' long and came straight to us to source out some suitable material.

As many of you probably already know, finding a single slab that size is a tough one to find (although we do currently have a bubinga slab measuring 72" x 120"!) Luckily we did have a beautiful bookmatched set of Parota (pictured below) for Phil to work with.

Not only did the combined dimensions of the bookmatched set match perfectly with the size table required by the client, but it also had the "golden-brown, acacia" look that was highly desired.



Here are some finished shots of the completed table right after it was delivered by Phil.

Look at the size of that table! We would have loved to see the piece in person, it must look amazing!



For more finished pieces in our best selling Parota, please click here

To see all our available slabs, click here to see the "Slabs" page of our website.

Don't miss the "Design In Wood" exhibit at this year's San Diego County Fair!

We will be presenting the "Sponsor's Choice" perpetual trophy at this year's "Design in Wood" exhibit.

This past Saturday we had the opportunity to stroll through the exhibit and get a sneak peek of all the neat pieces that will be on display this year.

Below is just a small sample of what will be at this year's show (we highly recommend attending if you are in the area!)

This exhibit will be running June 10th-July 4th
For more information, please visit-
http://www.sdfair.com/

For us, it's always great to see all the diverse woodworking talent and we always get a kick out of seeing our wood in finished pieces.


Although all the name tags were covered during the judging, we could identify a few of the designs the moment we walked in the door. Here is another great piece by our friend Terry Hanson.




Here is the front of the exhibit at the fairgrounds in sunny Del Mar, California.




There we are up on the wall!




Pretty much any woodworking genre is on display at this year's exhibit-woodturning, carving, furniture, you name it! It's all here for you to admire!

Here is a neat piece with some of our Buckeye burl as the base (I think the carved dolphins are out of our Goncalo Alves as well, but I am not 100% sure)






This is one of our favorites. As you all probably already know, we are suckers for good-looking pieces of Cocobolo. We started drooling when we saw this beauty!

Just look at the figure on the wood that was used in this cabinet, amazing!




Even the handles look good!




If you thought the outside looked good, wait until you look at the inside!

We will leave it at the that, you will have to drop by the show and check it out in person.

Just an amazing piece!





Woodturning as far as the eye can see!

That first one pictured above is by our good friend Pete Campbell, it measures about 20-24" in diameter and is about 1/8" thick all the way through!








More great turned pieces!




Here is a piece by our friend John Beaver out of our cocobolo. Make sure to check out his article in the latest issue of American Woodturner, I believe this piece is pictured.





Here is a piece using some of our Spalted Alder.







Lots of talented people out there!



Looks like someone got a hold of some of our USS battleship teak decking!

Neat piece!



How about this for a unique design?! Aptly named "A river runs through it"...





This piece is about 7' wide and 6' tall!






No shortage of fancy rocking chairs at this year's fair.





If guitars are your thing, plenty of those on display as well.







Here is the perpetual trophy we will be presenting to one lucky exhibitor (It will be on display at our shop after the fair along with a picture of the winning piece!)

Again, this year's exhibit will be a good one. If you can make it down to San Diego, make sure to drop by the fair and look at the pieces in person.