Burl Value?

[John Fricke]

I'll preface by saying i had no camera available, so no pics. I was on my route today, backed into a customers drive and started salivating. His yard is quite heavily wooded with quite large trees. He had obviously lost one in the wind storm we had last week. It was all cleaned up except sitting like a diamond in the rough was this huge burl. It measures 30" across and is about 24" tall. It is almost perfectly round, very uniformally surrounding a 10" log. I walked up to the guy and asked if he was interested in getting rid of that "knot" sitting in the front yard. He is sharp enough to realize it is not an ordinary piece. He wants fair value out of it. It is Oak, but he not sure what type. My question to anyone familiar with burls is what is the thing worth? My other question is, I'm sure it will be too heavy to load in one piece, am i better off to split it lenghtways through the log or to cross cut it. I am leaning towards crosscutting as I may want to get a table top out of it if it is solid as it looks. Any help would be appreciated.

[Marc Himes]

John I would split it down the middle (rip it) if your chain saw can handle it. Oak burls can have remarkable figure and interesting voids, so you can expect to get some very nice bowls out of such a big burl. I would do the usual wood turners barter and offer a bowl or platter to the owner. People ofter like to have something made from one of their own trees.

Marc Himes

[Barbara Gill]

John I would split it down the middle (rip it) if your chain saw can handle it. Oak burls can have remarkable figure and interesting voids, so you can expect to get some very nice bowls out of such a big burl. I would do the usual wood turners barter and offer a bowl or platter to the owner. People ofter like to have something made from one of their own trees.

Marc Himes

Good advice as you never know what is inside. Watch out for onion burl- layers instead of eyes and swirly grain. Onion burl will sometimes separate like the layers of an onion. I labored hard and long to harvest such a burl as you described. It was a layered white oak burl, but the layers did not separate. I turned one bowl and gave the rest away. Green it was harder than seasoned locust, a bear to turn and not worth the difficulty.

[Steve Schlumpf]

John - I second Marc's suggestion of a bowl or some turning from the burl - if the wood can be turned. Burls are always a guessing game and until you cut it up have no idea if you can work the wood. If the owner wants anything more that that - personally, I would walk away. There is lots of wood out there that is free - including burls.

As far as cutting it up, if you wanted to make slabs for a table, then I would cut it perpendicular to the burl. If you plan on turning it, then I would rip it lengthwise and seal everything.

[Jeff Nicol]

Offer him $20 and a wonderful turned piece as a rememberance piece for the tree. Most people like a little cash just because! You said that the log section is 24 inches long, if you cut a table section out of the middle and it is crappy you may be dissapointed. I would start at one end and cut blanks that you would want and see if there is a table piece in there, that way you would get the best of both worlds! Not every day a 30" burl is laying on the ground waiting for you to make a decision!

Good luck and smile sweetly when you make your offer!!

Jeff

[George Guadiane]

Recently, I got two red oak burls from a guy. One was good, but it has thin bark inclusions in it, and when I turned it down, the thing separated (cracked) along those inclusions - next time I'll soak the areas with CA glue to keep that from happening.
The other was from a different tree and didn't have bark inclusions, it was more of an "onion" burl, it separated quite a bit and I didn't get many BIG pieces to turn (still looks pretty so far).

As far as cutting it goes, I'd cut the pith line out of the center of the burl, deciding which two halves would be of the best use (for your lathe) and make the center section thick enough so that you can use it for something
Oak burl seems to like to WARP, so, extra thick center if you want to make platters/low bowls -
That's been MY experience with it, so far.

[Wyatt Holm]

$20 should be fair offer. As for cutting it cut it however you want. Burl grain is weird so it shouldn't make much difference how you cut it.

[John Fricke]

thank you all for your responses. I'll be sure to post pics when and if i get the burl.