Discussions

To begin with, not all rosewoods are created equal, in many ways. Rosewood essential oil is often taken from a Brazilian tree, aniba rosaeodora. When you buy wood from a craft supply shop, unless they get specific about the wood origin, it may be any number of tree species that have a rosy color, and they are not even all in the same family of tree. Types of rosewood can be found in Africa, South America, and South East Asia, and Australia, but since the look of the wood rather than the smell is the reason for the name, they can't all be expected to smell alike. Species can also matter since some wood workers report being very sensitive to one rosewood, but non reactive to others. I'm working with Dalbergia stevensonii, also known as Belize rosewood, sometimes found in Mexico as well, and it's the only one I can comment on right now.

To get this ingredient into a state I could use in combustible recipes took a fair bit of work and time. Like all rosewoods, it's a hard wood and I'm a chicken when it comes to power tools. Working with the tiny wood file mom snitches to file her nails nice and smooth, I had to work at sanding off enough powder to mix. If you want to try this at home, I highly recommend getting electric assistance or settling in to binge watch your favorite show. Despite the long hours it took to grind, I did get a really silky wood powder that I almost want to use as blush, and I thought it would help in the rolling/extruding process when I got to a mix.

Now the shop I got this wood from had cased it in paraffin so I had to get the coating off before I could get to work, but it brought the price of my block down too. Since I used a wood chisel to help get it off the surface, I had a good chance to check burn scent before I started making powder of it. Alone and raw, it has a light pear smell that's really lovely and definitely worth considering for non-combustible blends in a chipped form. It's light, cool, fruity and refreshing.

When I finally decided what blend I wanted to test it on, I had a major craving for berry incense, yet everyone seems to be out of black cherry and I didn't want strawberry, so my test blend is raspberry. Unfortunately as soon as I started blending I learned something really important about the wood. It's really fluffy. Like, crazy fluffy. Though it may be great in cosmetics, that's not great in incense. To balance for the fluffy teaspoons in relation to my binder, I had to use 3 spoons to make about a 1 1/2 teaspoon worth of wet mix. Too much binder will take forever to dry, and the feel of the blend as well as volume told me I was off. It also took a full overnight sit to get the mix even enough to roll, and since it was still trying to hold air bubbles, extruding is not a reasonable option. Too much air in a stick keep it from continuing to burn, so this one can't be rushed.

After I got the sticks rolled, in about 4 hours I could see a radical color shift that told me the outside was dry. Though they were still wiggly when handled, I got about a half cm to burn for an early scent check. It was a bit wood smokey at first, then settled into the fragrance I had added. The pear smell seems to have gotten lost in the 9 drops of raspberry even when it's completely dry, but the smokey start lingers. Though I'm pretty happy with the blend as it is, I will be trying a plain rosewood soon to see if the pear stays when there is no oil to compete, but right now it seems there are other types of powdered wood bases that may outshine this wood in combustible blends.

Happy blending.

 

 
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