Posted by Lacey Wilcox on 19th Jan 2015
Walnut has long been a favorite wood for crafting. Anyone who works with it can attest to its strength, durability, and natural beauty. It’s a mainly straight grained wood with an occasional wave in the grain. Its occasional wavy grain is one of its defining characteristics. Those are some characteristics we feel are equally important to personal style—straight-laced with a flair of the irregular. Just like our handcrafted wooden bowties, those irregularities provide a punch of style without ever being over-done.
Walnut wood is rich with different shades of red and brown throughout. It makes a perfect wood to be paired with all your button-up oxfords and a navy blazer will surely bring out a myriad of earth toned hues. A hand-crafted walnut bow tie or lapel flower will be your wardrobe workhorse. It can dress your look up or down depending on the hour. It’ll say experienced and bold at the office, while leaving you looking natural and inviting for happy hour. Walnut is nothing if not a workable wood. It sands, it paints, and it lacquers and lusters. It does it all… and makes it look easy.
Walnut is one of those woods that grows more lustrous with age too. So instead of looking like a beat-down, dried up, cracked and repaired piece of work, anything made from walnut ages and starts to look pretty savvy, experienced, and unafraid of the road ahead. It’s that board room cool you’re going to need for your next presentation or pitch. A walnut piece from Two Guys Bow Ties is going to make you the guy everyone comes to for answers. We don’t really know what you’re supposed to tell everyone at that point, but we’ve always been fans of “fake it until you make it”. Trust us, with the Cleveland Bow Tie or Oakland Lapel Flower, no one’s going think you’re faking it.
They’re going to say, “Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?”
Then you’re going to say, “No, that’ll be all… for now.”
Another great thing about walnut, besides workability and aged beauty, is its ability to have fun. Take a look at Marion here, above. He looks fun, right? That’s because walnut is a tough hardwood of medium density. He’s smart, but not astrophysicist smart. He’s not overly dense in that way, you know, the way where he’s debunking Interstellar the whole time you’re watching it? Then again, he’s not so dense the other way either—the way in which some hate craft beer and only drink Natty Light. He’s a real nice hardwood of medium density; equal parts smart and down to earth; equal parts wine and cheese as wings and beer. Walnut is a very flexible wood with low stiffness and it can be bent with steam better than many other woods to match any application. That’s one of the great things about medium density hardwoods—they can be whatever you need them to be.
Trust us, if you’re looking for a more versatile, workable wood you won’t find it outside of walnut. If you’re looking for a more elegant wearing wood with age, you won’t find it. If you’re looking for a more dense, on either side of the spectrum, wood; you’ll find it, but a spontaneous fellow like yourself may not want all the inherent constraints it’s sure to come with.
Check out our full-line of walnut crafted, handmade, hardwood accessories today.