Burl Wood Bowl Blanks - Where Do You Start?
George VondriskaDescription
One of the best parts of bowl turning is finding chunks of unusual wood that you can turn into amazing bowls. In this case, George was given a huge piece of red oak burl. In this video he explores the burl wood, and walks you through how he changes the huge chunk of wood into blanks for burl bowls. It’s all about processing the burl and converting it to what you need for your projects.
Green wood, or dry?
It’s best to start processing burls and logs for bowl blanks as quickly as possible. You want the wood green, wet, when you cut it up. If it dries as a log or burl there’s a good chance it will start to crack. Once you’ve got your green wood bowl blanks, you can use the trick George shows to keep them wet.
Making it easy
One of the easiest ways to get started on large pieces like this burl wood is by using an electric chain saw. Since it’s electric, it can be used in the shop with no worries about fumes. An electric chainsaw makes short work of cutting large pieces down to manageable size.
Bowl turning is a blast!
Turning bowls can be a very rewarding woodworking experience. An aspect of it that is very cool is the relatively short turn around from start to finish. Depending on the size of the bowl, you may be able to complete a bowl turning project in just a few hours. WoodWorkers Guild of America has lots of resources available to you that will help you master bowl turning.
Uh Jenny, where did this alien baby come from? I'm thinking from a tree. Yeah so, it's not really and alien baby, this is a burl off, I believe a red oak tree, we'll know more once we cut into it. And here's the thing, I'm making no promises here because burls are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get. Here's what we're gonna do, Jenny and I are gonna cut this apart and see what we can get out of it. What potentially is cool with burls is that the tree was down here, and this whole big wart was growing off the side of the tree. Now what I'm hoping to find in here is grain patters that are just going in 18 million different directions. But, we're not gonna know until we start to cut into it so probably this is gonna include eclectic chainsaw, which lets us work here in the shop, and then the bandsaw to kind of further refine what we get. And what's weird with this Jenny is that like, the bark on these things can often be super thick like, let's turn this so they can see, and then poke your finger in that big one so they can see how deep that is. So, the bark can be really super thick, so it can take a while to work your way through the bark to get to the real meat of this. Jenny is gonna be the holder on-er, and I'm gonna be the chainsaw operator, and then uh, I'm just gonna start cutting and we'll see what happens. So basically, what I wanna do is start at the outside and take off a little as possible. And start to expose wood. And once we can see light colored material, I mean and the bark is going away and we're getting to the wood, then we'll change our cutting direction. All right? Sounds good. Safety pays in many ways, eyes and ears. You know it. Good thing I didn't work out today. What? Now I can be strong. What? What? What? That never gets old. Yes it does. Ready? Move this hand back just a little bit. I'm gonna do it this way. You just kinda lean on it and we'll see what happens here. All right, first look, let's spin clockwise. All right so we got some coolness going on here. Look at the grain here, isn't that cool Jenny? Yeah you can't see it. It looks neat. And then over here there's a little spalting going on, this could be a problem there's a little bit of a split there, yeah. But I think we'll be- That's cool. Done in this direction, we'll start in this direction, and probably from here, we're just gonna keep cutting, and, with the chainsaw, and uh, not stop every time unless we see something really cool, like a pot of gold or something. Or a bug. Or a huge, yeah, tarantula. Which would be weird for Wisconsin, but you never know. Um, All right, second verse kinda the same as the first. I'm gonna come like, here or so. I'll hold over here. What's the worst that could happen? What do you think? Is it cool? It looks, it looks great. So we took this thing from an alien egg to what is going to be a really cool handful of ball blank. So here's what's gonna happen next, I'm done with the chainsaw, Jenny did a great job of holding onto the log while we choppa-chop it. It a pretty hard job, so. Yeah, well, sometimes you just gonna hold onto what you got. Um, the wood inside here, let's take a look. There's some amazing stuff, not only grain patterns, but if you look up here, this is the sapwood out here on the perimeter, and there's the start of some black lines, that's called spalting. That's a fungus that grows in the wood if it just lays on the ground for a while. So we'll see as we get in further, maybe they'll be some more spalting. Next for this, I'm done with the chainsaw and I'll take this to a bandsaw and continue to process it down to smaller sizes. Now here's what's really important. The moisture content, does that piece feel pretty wet or pretty dry? It pretty wet. Yeah, the moisture content's high and that's good because we don't want this to dry out because it'll lead to, do you know? Did we talk about this? Would it crack and- Yeah it starts to crack. So, um, we wanna keep this wet. And that's why I wrapped this one up. Stretch film is a great solution for this, this is a 15 inch roll of stretch film. This one is wrapped up, it gets it pretty hermetically sealed until I can start to work with it for the next step. I'll do the same thing to each of these pieces, even these off cuts. Look at this one. That one is definitely worth holding onto because that's really cool inside there, it'll be a small piece of something, but it's definitely worth holding onto. So, I'll stretch film everything, set it aside until I can get back to it. Are you amazed by what came out of burl, Milton? It's definitely cool, I mean, warts are sure ugly on the outside of trees, but once you crack 'em open. Don't judge a burl by it's cover. Or it's bark. Yeah, right. I think we're done, see ya.
Really ... with all the clamps and being a wood shop,, you have a young lady hold the burl,, I am flabbergasted,, her father must have given you a black eye for that lame move,, Kick back and on a makeshift table,, could have screwed 2x4 or something to a more secure table, I am not impressed
How would you get these on the lathe as most of the sides exposed by the chain saw cuts are end grain? Having trouble getting my pieces to stay on the lathe due to going into end grain.
The next steps on this burl would be a great video. How do you prepare a surface for a faceplate?
I understand the intent to keep the wood moist in order to prevent cracking and to promote spalting. As someone who is a bit green himself I'm quite curious as to when and how you let (or cause) it to dry without cracking.
I have two large birch burls and I'm trying to figure out a way to get it round to go on the lathe. I have a chainsaw a bandsaw with a 4 inch height capacity and a reciprocating saw. Both burls are fairly symmetrical, I have seen people mount them on the lathe and round them on the lathe after cutting them to size like in the video. What are your opinions on this technique is it safe? What are some safety considerations that you have to be aware of when using this technique. Other than standard safety technique.
<strong>Ticket 21884 Do you use bar oil when you use the electric chain saw inside? I have an electric saw but it throws off enough oil I wouldn't want to use it inside.
Won’t wrapping a wet piece of wood in plastic cause a huge growth of mold, ruining your burl? Why not just paint on a sealer instead?
Boy!!! This is a cliff hanger when do we get next chapter? Jerry
Be careful having a partner hold your work with a chain saw. Kick back is a real thing.... I personally know of a fatality from this practice.