Sawmilling large burls

[kevin nee]

Hello, I have come across some large maple burls. I usually have my burls cut with the grain
at 2 inch thick for platters and 4-5 thick for shallow bowls and whatever I feel like doing I use
all cut-offs for pens, ice cream scoops, seam rippers and bottle stoppers etc. The gentleman that
owns the sawmill is a segmented only turner. I plan to give him a couple of burls. He stands the
burl on end with the pith facing up & down and runs it all at 1 1/4 inch he cuts his segments
from these slabs. Any thoughts on this subject would be appreciated. I have ruined some nice burl
material trying to cut it with a chain saw. The sawmill is quite a tool I don't think that I can go
back to chain sawing the large burl bowl blanks. Anyone else go this route?

[Jeff Nicol]

Kevin,

I just finished sawing a large maple burl that had a big hole in it where squirrels had lived for many years before the tree had been harvested on my cousins property. I had it sitting here for about 4 years and finally got it cut into blanks, the best thing is that it is fantastically spalted due to my procrastination! So with that being said, I did it with a chainsaw because it was much to large for me to cut on my Woodmizer mill, and I cut it mostly into chunks that were not punky from the hole and moisture that was in the old leaves and stuff the squirrels left in it. If I get smaller ones that are good and solid I will cut them into slabs for platters and other things, but if the burl is not solid but has voids and cracks in it I will try and cut the best parts out for bowls or hollow forms and so on. There are 2 main types of burls, onion burls and EYE burls, the eye burls have the nice lacy look with swirls and eyes and are most always solid and stay together well over time. The onion type have layers like and onion and they can be very fragile and come apart at the seams or petals of the burl, these are pretty but tough to get good solid ones and still can be cut to attain good blanks.

So for me it comes down to what the burl looks like and the size of it on how I cut them up. If you have access to a lot of them you can try different methods to get the most out of each one.

Hope it goes well and your sawyer is happy with his burl,

Jeff