Mulberry?

[Tom Albrecht]

I have an opportunity to grab some Mulberry logs.

Should I bother?

Why is it I've not seen a beautiful Mulberry bowl? Or even an ugly one? Or, have I missed it?

TA

[Bob Coates]

I turned several Mulberry bowls. Wood is light brown(tan) and cures to dark brown. Don't have a picture.

[Roger Chandler]

Comes in several varieties........I have turned some yellow Mulberry. One natural edge bowl and a couple of pens from the scraps. No pics......sorry!

[Leo Van Der Loo]

There are 2 common Mulberry trees in N.America, one is the native Red Mulberry and next the imported species that was used in the trial of producing silk in he US which didn’t work well, even though the White Mulberry does grow just nicely here.

Mulberry is very closely related to Osage Orange, close enough that most can’t tell the difference without some trials, Osage will make a yellow dye when steeped in water.

I’ve turned quite a bit of Mulberry, much less so the Osage Orange wood, so first a picture of a couple of bowls that show the changing of the colors of both Mulberry and Osage Orange, 2 of each here.

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Fresh color is bright yellow heartwood and white sapwood, like here.

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A couple more, it is behaving like fruitwood, so dry it slowly, even then the sapwood likes to check and split.
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[David Gilbert]

YES, you should bother! It's lovely to turn wet and then you can fume it with ammonia to a lovely dark brown. Fuming after it has dried doesn't seem to work quite as well.

Cheers,
David

[robert baccus]

Red mullberry and osage are both bright yellow fading to dark brown. Both are displaced tropicals with all the usual problems. Very hard when dry, split easily and fade colors quickly.

[Jeramie Johnson]

Grab it. It is one of my favorites. I prefer the mulberry I grabbed over the Osage I have laying around. Most I gave as gifts, but this one had a crack so it's a utility bowl. Excuse the simplicity, but I am a novice. The blanks I made were from a very old tree, unusally large diameter that fell victim to ants.
As it is a working bowl, hope the wife doesn't mind me dumping contents and putting back in. Smudges are from being used.
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[Tom Albrecht]

Thanks guys. Looks good.

[Brian Myers]

Grab it if you can of course , such a silly question from a turner. Watch for cracks and ring/wind shake. If the tree grew sprawled out all over the place expect to find changes in density in the wood. My family had a huge sprawling mulberry cut down when I first started turning. It was full stress cracks and ring shake but it turned well. It will dull turning tools, bandsaw blades and chainsaw blades fairly quickly, the wood dust felt sandy. Our tree was cut down during the summer and it was FULL of water, I got a shower with every piece. The green wood starts out heavy but gets considerably lighter in weight when it dries. Starts out a cool yellow but changes to a reddish brown. The time for the color change seemed to depend on how much light it was exposed to. Oiling the wood seems to deepen the reddish brown even further especially walnut oil, at least it did with the wood I had. The really dark bowls Leo showed are the color mine turned out to be. Does make a good solid utility bowl that should last a long time even under heavy use.

[Jon Nuckles]

I am surprised by the love for mulberry expressed above. Maybe the variety we have here around Chicago is different. I have found it to be stringy and coarse grained. While the bright yellow is interesting at first, the brown that it quickly turns into is not attractive, imho. Ours must be different from Leo's, as you would never mistake it for osage orange.

Edit: Knowing Leo's expertise in wood identification, I decided to post a shot of my mulberry and osage orange turnings. Maybe he can tell if my mulberry is of a different variety.

[ALAN HOLLAR]

The only downsides to mulberry I found were the dramatic color change from bright yellow to a dark honey color, still pleasant but not exciting, and trying to keep the bark on. The incredibly stringy and coarse cambium layer can be stabilized, but the texture is a distraction from the form.

[Roger Chandler]

That pretty yellow color on Jon's bowl above is what I liked, and the grain on his bowl is pretty much like what I turned as well......the bowl did turn darker, but the two pens stayed yellow, I guess because of the numerous extra layers of finish.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I am surprised by the love for mulberry expressed above. Maybe the variety we have here around Chicago is different. I have found it to be stringy and coarse grained. While the bright yellow is interesting at first, the brown that it quickly turns into is not attractive, imho. Ours must be different from Leo's, as you would never mistake it for osage orange.

Edit: Knowing Leo's expertise in wood identification, I decided to post a shot of my mulberry and osage orange turnings. Maybe he can tell if my mulberry is of a different variety.

Funny, as I looked at your pictures Jon, before reading your post, I said to myself that surely looks like Osage, then saw the name on the bottom of the second picture, of course the two pictures are not taken at the same angles to show the grain in more identical manner, as a matter of fact I cant tell what the grain looks like on that picture, just the yellow color, and those have always changed, some taking longer than others, mostly depending their exposure and or finish used.

The color of both these woods are so alike and are changing very much to the amount of UV they are subjected to, my bowls are all finished the same so that does not differentiate the coloration.

So if people can tell me with certainty which wood these bowls are made of, I’d say “ you are good” I know it isn’t easy.

Also liking or not liking a color goes right up there withj what my Grandfather said, “If everyone liked the same thing, they all would have wanted to marry your grandmother” ;)

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I know that both Red and White Mulberry can grow in the Chicago area, though the Red has always been a lesser grown wild tree, while the White has been planted as a park and garden species, hybrids like the fruitless and other varieties and they will grow very fast with the right conditions, and these will give the wood a coarse appearance, yet all turned well in my experience, here’s 2 that had grown fast, yet given time they all will change color.

Anyway I would hive it better than a 50% change that you did turn White Mulberry, though I could never tell them apart by color or looking just at the wood :)

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[Jon Nuckles]

You know, Leo, the main difference between the mulberry and Osage I showed may well be the speed of growth. The Osage had close growth rings and was quite hard. It took a polish almost like an oily tropical. The mulberry had much wider rings and was softer and seemed coarse to the touch. My experience with mulberry around here, and it is one of the most frequently chopped down trees that I see, is that quick growth is very common. I get Osage much less often, so I don't know if what I got that time is typical. It is also true that the mulberry I showed had not completed its color change before I took the picture. I gave that one away while it was still yellow, but with a warning to the recipient not to fall in love with the color as it would not last. I also have a bit of a bias against mulberry because I once made a bench from it (kiln dried wood from a local urban wood supplier) and it was not as strong as I would have liked. I had to remake a couple of pieces that broke. I had made an earlier version from red oak and it was rock solid. Again, the mulberry had grown quickly and may have been weaker as a result. Finally, when I lived in the city and parked on the street, I used to curse the birds that ate the mulberries and left the evidence on my car.

[robert baccus]

Both species are tropicals that were able to thrive in temperate zones as well. Growth ring width is a function of sunlight exposure (like all trees) while growing and can change drastically in the same log. Both are very hard and a bit brittle but very strong. Like most tropicals the color tends to fade with UV exposure and can turn to black with ageing.

[Wes Ramsey]

I also love mulberry, though more for the smoker than the lathe. It gives a wonderful, fruity smoke that is amazing on chicken. But I also like turning it as it turns well, is plentiful here in north AR, doesn't get buggy like some other woods and always has interesting voids. It seems to share a lot of properties with WR cedar - cuts easy, hard but brittle, smells good, doesn't get buggy, weathers well and is relatively stable when rough turned. The batch I'm working with now came down in a 2007 tornado and when I rescued it all the sapwood was gone, but the wood was still in good shape. It was mostly dry and moves a bit when turned, but the chunks I cut are still sitting outside, unprotected from the elements, and haven't checked as much as some other woods in the same stack from the same storm.

Here is a mulberry weed pot I turned for a friend. I had just picked up some red aniline dye and wanted to see what it would do on yellow wood. I was pleased with the results. The finish is lacquer and the inlace is crushed green malachite.
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[Jeramie Johnson]

Also liking or not liking a color goes right up there withj what my Grandfather said, “If everyone liked the same thing, they all would have wanted to marry your grandmother” ;)

Yep, Osage is nice, I have it laying around, but to me it appears "bleached" or "dyed". Then again, I have little Mulberry, so that may make me biased. To each their own.

[David Delo]

Inlace generally doesn't do much for my taste buds but you picked out a great combo with your dye & inlace. Very beautiful piece Wes.





I also love mulberry, though more for the smoker than the lathe. It gives a wonderful, fruity smoke that is amazing on chicken. But I also like turning it as it turns well, is plentiful here in north AR, doesn't get buggy like some other woods and always has interesting voids. It seems to share a lot of properties with WR cedar - cuts easy, hard but brittle, smells good, doesn't get buggy, weathers well and is relatively stable when rough turned. The batch I'm working with now came down in a 2007 tornado and when I rescued it all the sapwood was gone, but the wood was still in good shape. It was mostly dry and moves a bit when turned, but the chunks I cut are still sitting outside, unprotected from the elements, and haven't checked as much as some other woods in the same stack from the same storm.

Here is a mulberry weed pot I turned for a friend. I had just picked up some red aniline dye and wanted to see what it would do on yellow wood. I was pleased with the results. The finish is lacquer and the inlace is crushed green malachite.
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[Wes Ramsey]

Inlace generally doesn't do much for my taste buds but you picked out a great combo with your dye & inlace. Very beautiful piece Wes.

Thanks David! I honestly thought it would be scrapped several times, but figured I would dye it and finish it out to see what happened. I had to dye it twice. I never considered that the porous malachite would absorb the dye. Had to sand it down and try again. I was pretty happy with the results for a practice piece.