The giant oak burl that I sawed last year yielded many large
pieces of wood and several bowl blanks.
Two of the slabs and a burl cap looked like this when
I brought them home:
The largest is approximately three feet by three feet, and it was
a bear to move around.
I managed to get it out of my car and into my shop, but it was
right at the limit of what I can lift. I needed to get it onto my
CNC in order to mill it flat, and prior to lifting it I thought that
I should weigh it so that I would know precisely what I was
working with. I took my scale out to the shop and I was able
to wrangle the slab enough to get the scale under it.
It turns out that prior to milling it weighed 145 pounds,
so I enlisted the help of a neighbor to lift it up and onto the
bed of the machine, then I set about milling it.
Using a 3” diameter spoil board flattening bit I
systematically got one side reasonably
flat, then I flipped it over and repeated that process
on the other side. By then both sides of the slab were
parallel and I had removed enough wood to be able
to move it around by myself, so I took it off the machine
and weighed it again. It weighed 95 pounds at
that point which means that I had converted 50 pounds
of burl wood into chips and dust. And boy, did that
make a mess in my shop! For those of you who are
also woodworkers and wondering what I use for dust collection,
I use the floor. Simple, gravity powered, and quiet. Low
tech for the win!
This is what it looked like after I took it off the CNC:
I like the figure and I think it will make a great table top when it is
thoroughly dried.
I have turned a number of bowls out of the burl. This one is nearly
finished and I really like the figure:
I finished this platter quickly because I dried it in the microwave.
Oh yeah, instant platter!
Since the grain in the burl was, in a sense, random,
I couldn’t determine prior to
turning how to saw the blank that I used for this bowl.
It was significantly ovalized when I started finish turning
it but I had left enough wall thickness to make a round
bowl, but just barely, hence the thin walls.
That’s actually a good thing as this wood is quite dense and heavy.
I sawed a number of book-matched panels out of the burl:
Those are going to be awesome!
A rough turned bowl:
I am going to wait until later this year to finish turn that one.
This big block has not decided what it wants to be yet,
but as soon as it lets me know, then I will make it happen!
And, for review, here is what the burl looked like when
we started sawing it. It was huge.
I took that saw into the shop this morning to see
about replacing the power head,the guy suggested that
I get it repaired, again, and time will tell if that is
an economical decision. I really want a saw that is
easier to start. As I approach three quarters of a century
I really want a saw that doesn't fight me when I
want to start it.
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