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Rob Boesem
06-08-2013, 2:39 PM
A friend of mine works for our local municipality, and works at the landfill on occasion....He scored me a birch burl from the wood waste pile and I roughed it out to a closed form last night....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v466/jockeydeuce/IMG_8321_zps2ed93592.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/jockeydeuce/media/IMG_8321_zps2ed93592.jpg.html)

Pretty stunning figure!:o

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v466/jockeydeuce/IMG_8326_zpsdee2d6e5.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/jockeydeuce/media/IMG_8326_zpsdee2d6e5.jpg.html)

Into a bag for a few months now.
Mike Cruz
06-08-2013, 3:30 PM
A friend indeed!
charlie knighton
06-08-2013, 3:33 PM
enjoy, a friend indeed
Brian Kent
06-08-2013, 3:45 PM
Wow!

Beautiful wood and it is good to have friends who know what you are looking for.
Bob Bergstrom
06-08-2013, 3:59 PM
That's the kind of friend we all "wood" like to have. Beautiful wood. Looks like it is going to be a nice piece.
kevin nee
06-08-2013, 4:00 PM
Wait until you put a finish on it! Birch Burl is my favorite.
Rob Boesem
06-08-2013, 4:27 PM
Wait until you put a finish on it! Birch Burl is my favorite.


Good old paper birch is pretty much the only native hardwood we have here, so I tend to turn a lot of it and actively hunt for Birch burls all the time. This one has the most "quilting" I've seen so far in one, but I'm a relative newbie to turning......I can't wait to get this one finished and see it POP when the finish is on.:)
Dennis Nagle
06-08-2013, 5:00 PM
Very cool.
Allan Ferguson
06-08-2013, 7:20 PM
That is indeed a very nice piece of wood. I would hope that it will turn out to be a real stunner.
Dennis Nagle
06-08-2013, 8:38 PM
This might be a dumb question, but with the tangled grains of a burl, couldn't you stick it in the Microwave for a bit to dry it without worrying about cracks???
Mike Cruz
06-08-2013, 10:21 PM
Depending on the kind of wood, Dennis, burls can crack as much in not more than anything else. I just cored a cherry bowl recently, and even with a really good DNA soak, it got a LOT of very small cracks throughout. Not sure how deep they are, but certainly on the surface. I'll find out in a couple of weeks when I re-turn them. And I had some willow burl that I used anchorseal on. They got some 1/4" wide x 1" long cracks in them. I just turned a maple burl NE closed form. I had anchorseal on the blank, and it sat around for 1 1/2 years or so. Turned it to finish yesterday (no re-turning), and it not only didn't crack, but didn't even warp! Crazy things, those burls are...
Rob Boesem
06-09-2013, 12:36 AM
Yep, I find the characteristics of each burl is different....Some move around and crack and some are quite stable with the same drying process. I had another birch burl that I had wrapped up and I had a peek at it a week later and it had a monster crack running almost half way across it.....A bit of a crap shoot.