Exotic Wood Divot Tools

Exotic Wood Divot Tools

Grade: A
Teachers’ Comments: Beautiful to look at, wonderful to hold.

For several years now, I have tried to whittle a wood ball mark tool during my annual weeks as a Scoutmaster at Boy Scout Camp. My efforts have been futile. Try as I might I just could’t carve one whose tines would stand up to even light use. The problem, of course, was my selection of woods. The pine, maple and sycamore sticks I found just weren’t up to the task.

What the job calls for is an exotic hardwood—something with a hardness index of 2000+—such as Bloodwood (3,300) or Purpleheart (2090). Pine is an 870 and Sycamore a 770.

Bob at Exotic Wood Divot Tools starts with just those sort of materials: Rosewood, Purpleheart, Queenwood, Rosewood, Canarywood and Bubina. The result is an absolutely beautiful and unique ball mark tool. The one I received is made of Queenwood and came in a small cloth bag.

Queenwood, for the record is from Peru and “feature lavender to purple heartwood with highly grained characteristics and cream colored contrasting sapwood.”

In the hand, the tool has that warm feel that you get only from polished, oiled wood. It is perfectly sized, and there is a well designed indentation on one side for thumb placement.

To personalize the tool, you can get it stamped with your initials. The letters are in a “dancing” pattern (meaning that they don’t align like typesetting on a page), and are backfilled with colors to complement the wood. Bob also has the ability to laser engrave the tools, as he did for a shop with the club’s logo.

Given the winter conditions here at GolfBlogger World Headquarters in Michigan, I obviously have not yet had a chance to try the tool. It feels very sturdy, though. Bob guarantees the tool against breakage from normal use, and will replace it for free less shipping. He also asks that you return the broken one.

The price of the hardwood divot tool as of this writing is $16.50. I think that is a very good price for such a nice tool. Plastic or metal stamped ones are not that much cheaper.

Recommended.