These are premium reel seats. The hardware is by Lemke, number LC1. The inserts are hand selected olive wood from pruning of olive trees on the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem. Due to the care these trees get, some of them date back to the time of Christ.
If you look at the top insert, there is a bit of red running through the grain that was not apparent when I started turning the insert.
These reel seats were both a joy and very difficult for me to do. With the cancer, I kept thinking of Christ at Gethsemane telling his Father that he really did not want to do what was coming perhaps praying under one of these trees. Silly thoughts, but they were there. I’m not too keen to have cancer, either.
The fragrance of the wood is soft and mild and gentle. I had to sand out a little wood as I had cut the tenon a tad long on the top seat and the resulting smoke generated from the Dremel tool was soothing to the lungs.
I often think of the beauty of God’s creations when working with the materials he has given me but never did I feel the connection like I did with these reel seats.
