250 pieces of peg wood for less than a buck?!?

[Tudor]

Yep. Tastes great; less filling. 

Seems to clean jewel holes just as well as the “fancy” stuff. 

[oldhippy]

I don’t want to burst your bubble but tooth picks are not the same as peg wood.

Birch wood is used for tooth picks, dogwood is used for peg wood. Birch is harder. 

[Colditz]

Thanks OH 

Again I've learnt something. I  have never used tooth picks as they seem too brittle, I didn't know they were made of birch though.

 

[Tudor]

No bubble. 

If I run into a problem, I’ll update here. But hardness is similar, actually a bit softer, for “birch” which has several varieties. (I picked the high and low hardness variety, since you wouldn’t know what species you’d get)

Flowering Dogwood Janka Hardness: 2,150 lbf(9,560 N)

Gray Birch Janka Hardness: 760 lbf (3,380 N)

Sweet Birch Janka Hardness: 1470 lbf (6,540 N)

Soaking in Ronsinol softens the wood further. Primary use is cleaning jewels for me. 

No one need do what I do. Just sharing. 

 

[Tudor]

I have seen “Beech” listed as the wood species of peg wood. 

Im going to presume European Beech, since that’s where the use originated in watch repair. 

Janka Hardness: 1,450 lbf(6,460 N)

that seems to be more in line with Birch as well. In these small sizes, it is hard to differentiate the hardness. In a 4/4 broad, it’s much easier. 

[nickelsilver]

I use toothpicks all the time on clocks, but no way you can get them sharp enough to do sub-0.10mm jewel holes, or if you do, they break off in the hole.

[praezis]

Catalogues names hornbeam and, traditionally, spindle tree for peg wood - whatever plants they are.

Frank

[Tudor]

Hornbeam is another name for Dogwood, although there are variations within the type, where one might be called one and not the other.

Like Birch, I suspect there are several species within the family, with varying hardnesses.

I would say, if you can put a fine enough point on boxwood/Hornbeam, you should be able to do it with Birch as well. 600 grit paper should do it.

Something like Swamp Ash, with it's very open grain, I could see it not being possible to sharpen to a fine point.

I'll let you all know how I do with my toothpicks, if there are any breakage issues etc.

[KarlvonKoln]

Anybody try using the bamboo skewers?  I can get a nice point on them, and I've used them for modeling tasks, but not on watches yet.  Thought about trying.  You can get loads of them cheap.  And they are more inclined to bend before they'd go so far as to splinter.