Lacebark Elm Wood Help

[Thomas Canfield]

Anyone have experience with Lacebark Elm? I got about 8' of trunk ranging from 10" to 8" D and a lot of 4" to 6" D branch material from a fresh cut tree today. It seems to be very dense with light sap wood and medium brown heart and not very sappy. I am guessing that the larger sections need to be twice turned for bowls or else turned very thin. The bark looks like it is still somewhat loose and will not hold, but not a problem to me loosing the bark on any natural edge. I would like to save some wood for spindle or endgrain work in future.

Please tell experience.

[Shawn Pachlhofer]

also known as Chinese elm?

the pieces I've saved in the past checked very badly, but I also didn't seal them well.

it will spalt nicely - in fact I still have a large crotch that is spalted, and I managed to keep it from checking (mostly). some day I'll get around to turning it.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Anyone have experience with Lacebark Elm? I got about 8' of trunk ranging from 10" to 8" D and a lot of 4" to 6" D branch material from a fresh cut tree today. It seems to be very dense with light sap wood and medium brown heart and not very sappy. I am guessing that the larger sections need to be twice turned for bowls or else turned very thin. The bark looks like it is still somewhat loose and will not hold, but not a problem to me loosing the bark on any natural edge. I would like to save some wood for spindle or endgrain work in future.

Please tell experience.

Thomas I have never turned Chinese Elm AKA Lacebark Elm, the Lacebark doesn’t like the cold temps and doesn’t survive it.

However I have turned Rock Elm which is also a hard wood Elm, probably has similar color as well, my experience with that wood is that it does warp and shrink more than most woods that I have ever turned.

However by turning it while still fresh/green and then drying slow in a brown paper bag stored in a cool spot I managed to get all my pieces to survive the drying stage without any splitting, bot finish turned and returned pieces, but yes they did warp quite a lot.

I have a picture here that shows how much the piece shrunk, it has the outside oval where I then returned the dry piece within, another bowl that shows the grain and color, plus info I found on the Lace Elm wood, hope you will turn some pieces and do show here the outcome, I’m certainly interested in the grain and color of this wood when finished, good luck 315520

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