Burl Question

[Jim Tobias]

This weekend my wife and I were out of town visiting the kids/grandkids and returned home to find a large oak had fallen over. Very lucky for us as it was near the front of the house, but blew directly away from the house. Anyway, by the time we got home, I already had 3 "notes" stuck in my front door from people wanting to cut it up for me. 2 of them were in the business and wanted a few hundred to cut up and remove everything. Luckily, the last offer was from a guy down the street whose note said he would cut it up and clean up in exchange for the wood. I called back and he is coming today.
Now for the "burl" part. There is a burl near the bottom/root where the tree meets the ground. He has agreed to slice that off for me and leave it as he only wants the wood as firewood. Is this likely to contain any nice figure and if so, how do I dry it? Never dried a burl before. I know about stickering regular lumber to dry but wondered if this is different in any way?

Thanks,
Jim

[Don Buck]

I don't know if this will qualify as the correct way but I was visiting a customer's lumber yard in England back in January and took a photo of some burls that were air drying on his yard. The burls were just piled on each other, no sticking. I'll try to post a photo with this reply.



191158

191159

Don

[Jonathan Spool]

Jim,
Root burls are notoriously plagued with stones, which will make it difficult to mill. Looks like you have a nice tree there. I would do an exchange, where you get a portion of the lumber in exchange for the harvester removing the tree and cleaning up. Try to get the burl portion cut up as part of the deal. You want the upper portion!