Advise request: How to cut this?

[Glenn Kotnik]

I saw the utility people cutting trees a couple of days ago so I went back on Saturday morning and threw a few hunks of wood into my truck. I got some nice red mulberry which I’ll use for tool handles and the like. I also got some hunks of what appears to be maple. One piece of maple has large dark stains on the ends which I didn’t think much of until I cut off some unusable wood on one side and discovered the handiwork of the ambrosia beetles. So now it appears that the ambrosia streaks go all the way thru the sapwood area of the hunk. I’d really like to turn some pieces which would prominently feature the ambrosia streaks.
My qiestion is what are my best options for bandsawing the piece. Should I try to get one big 12” diameter very open bowl, should I try to get several smaller bowls, say 6-7”, or should I try to get a big platter with ambrosia stains over the whole surface? I could also consider a tall vase-like piece with the grain running vertically. Either way I go I think I’d rather turn finished thin-walled pieces rather than rough turn thick pieces and take a chance they won’t crack as they dry.
I appreciate any suggestions. I think I’ll go back and see if there’s any more of this tree left.

[Dennis Ford]

The purple line in picture one looks like a plan for a nice bowl blank.

[Glenn C Roberts]

I would flip coins. All your options sound great.

[John K Jordan]

... I think I’ll go back and see if there’s any more of this tree left.

That sounds like the best plan. Then you can try it lots of different ways! I find it impossible to know the one perfect way to cut up a single chunk.

If you get enough maybe try cutting and drying some blanks. Is that sugar/hard maple or a soft maple like sliver or red? I haven't tried big blanks of sugar maple but I've dried plenty of soft maple blanks without cracking.

Last year a friend gave me a bunch of sections from a maple tree with a lot of ambrosia stain. The tree had been over 3' in diameter but the tree service sliced it into 15-18" long rounds then quartered those. I cut a huge number of blanks for our club wood auction, some up to 12" square and 15" long, big bowl blanks, slabs for shallow bowls/platters, and lots of smaller blanks for boxes and such. Wow, was that stuff popular at the auction! I cut as far as I could from the pith and the juvenile wood around the pith, kept a little ways from the bark, then sealed all end grain and some side grain with Anchorseal. So far none of the pieces I kept show no signs of cracking after about a year indoors. (I think the biggest is 8x8"x15", perfect for some kind of vessel or some end grain bowls.) If you get enough chunks, you might try this with some.

JKJ

[Thomas Canfield]

I would turn it as natural edge. I like to take a section like that to drill press and shim it up to position and then use a 3-1/8" Forstner bit to make a flat spot through bark for a 3" faceplate using a cardboard circle template to locate center. That leaves more of the stain area in the bowl. You can make the NE a longer oval by having the section longer than wide and it seems to work well up to 1.5 times width and still have bowl shape and not a platter. You can trim some of the corners off using bandsaw with the template fastened or I often just mark with chalk to get a rough cut. The green wood cuts easily and if you lathe can handle the unbalance, you can work with the excess wood. I do use the tailstock but this method works on 50+ pound sections on my Powermatic 3520 easily and have done up to 100 pound 20" sections that I had to drill by hand off the 17" drill press. I do turn thick to dry.

[Glenn Kotnik]

I decided to cut it into several smaller bowls, each about 6”. This way I was able to capture a lot of the complex ambrosia stain patterns. I’m not completely certain what species of maple it is but the bark looks more like some species of hard maple to me. I went back to the rural road where the trees were cut and I was able to score several more pieces of maple which show a large amount of ambrosia beetle activity. So I have plenty of wood to explore various options. I will definitely turn a large shallow NE bowl as Thomas suggests. And I’d like to do a couple of tall endgrain hollow vessels, it would be interesting to see the ambrosia figure extend over the surface of a tall thin vessel. I have so much of the wood that I’ll need to rough turn and dry much of it so it doesnÂ’t crack before I can get to it.

[John K Jordan]

Glenn,

From the photo that does look like some sugar maple I cut last year - it has a lot more contrast than the soft maple ambrosia I have had. (Maple around here is usually either sugar, red, or silver.) If you have an accurate scale you can dry a piece in an oven at about 120 degrees then measure and weigh to get the density. I keep a toaster oven in the shop for that and dryness testing. This has a density table: https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/differences-between-hard-maple-and-soft-maple/

Don't forget to show the finished piece!

As for turning quickly, did you happen to see the post "Did I just pickup some firewood"? https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?270345-Did-I-just-pickup-some-firewood
I put some comments there about preserving wood until ready to turn. One thing I just remembered I left out - you can freeze wood if you have enough space. I bought a spare chest freezer for extra honey supers and other beekeeping stuff. Since it's often mostly empty I sometimes use it for wood. For long term I wrap completely in plastic to minimize drying. As an experiment one chunk was still in good condition after about five years.

JKJ


I decided to cut it into several smaller bowls, each about 6”. This way I was able to capture a lot of the complex ambrosia stain patterns. I’m not completely certain what species of maple it is but the bark looks more like some species of hard maple to me. I went back to the rural road where the trees were cut and I was able to score several more pieces of maple which show a large amount of ambrosia beetle activity. So I have plenty of wood to explore various options. I will definitely turn a large shallow NE bowl as Thomas suggests. And I’d like to do a couple of tall endgrain hollow vessels, it would be interesting to see the ambrosia figure extend over the surface of a tall thin vessel. I have so much of the wood that I’ll need to rough turn and dry much of it so it doesnÂ’t crack before I can get to it.