Spalted figured and opaque Aspen plate

[Leo Van Der Loo]

The new home we have here in N.W.Ontario is situated in the middle of miles and miles and miles of forest, with a Highway running through it, lots of trees of course, little hardwood to turn, unless Birch or Poplar and Aspen count for turning wood :rolleyes:

Anyway I would hardly ever consider turning these kinds of wood, however I do want to turn anything new, just to find out for myself, and often enough find that I never have to do that again :D.

Now I had a tall big Trembling Aspen standing fairly close to my storage unit (with a lot of my dry rough-turned bowls etc in it) and it is dead already for a while, so I thought it was prudent to take care of that tree so it would not fall the wrong way.

O.K. so down she goes exactly where I wanted it, and then cut it up into pieces, of course I have to look at how that wood looks like inside, first off it is full with Carpenter Ant nests from top to bottom, surprised me actually, as I had thought there would be only one nest/colony in a log and in the bottom end of the tree, anyway as I was looking this log over I also saw spalting lines, O.K. that gets my interest up, wonder how it would turn and would it be worth the effort, got to try to find out right ;)

I turned a couple of plates and one bowl out of it, the bowl really was hard to do in the part I had chosen, nice grain color and spalting but that soft spalted Aspen isn’t exactly easy turning wood, I’d say not worth all the trouble trying to get a nice bowl out of it, the plates were better/easier to turn and as I turned them quite thin they were somewhat opaque.

So here’s one plate out of a crotch piece of that wood, warped a little, finished with polymerized Tung Oil, about 10” wide :)

All comments welcome 299790
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[charlie knighton]

did you get any fuzzies, I understand aspen has interlocking grain, so alsways a clock face somewhere

plates look good, thanks for sharing

[Leo Van Der Loo]

did you get any fuzzies, I understand aspen has interlocking grain, so alsways a clock face somewhere

plates look good, thanks for sharing

Thanks Charlie :)

Here are the other two pieces I turned from it, you can see there was some in the bottom of the bowl, not a problem with the plates though Charlie.

The other plate with worm holes, closed them later with copper powder and CA
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This is the bowl and it has some fuzz in the bottom, needed to use the skew on the outside to get a reasonable finish cut.
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[robert baccus]

As you said Leo, dry aspen can be a bear. Turns much better green and it can be sanded wet if green and left to warp. Nice work on difficult wood.

[Bob Bergstrom]

Beautiful wood and workmanship to match. You might want to think about making a lampshade from some. It sure lets the light through:D

[Leo Van Der Loo]

As you said Leo, dry aspen can be a bear. Turns much better green and it can be sanded wet if green and left to warp. Nice work on difficult wood.

Thanks for the comments Robert :), the next one that I cut down is cut up and split, died last year and not rotten, it’ll heat the house next year, and boy is that heavy wood when green, light when dry, must be more water/sap than anything else :eek:

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Beautiful wood and workmanship to match. You might want to think about making a lampshade from some. It sure lets the light through:D

Thanks Bob :), Yes I has past my mind, as I just cut a big one a couple of weeks ago, I have left one large bottom-end piece in the bush, (might just give it a go just to find out) the rest has been dragged out and split, but don’t hold your breath, it might never happen ;)