Need advise on to make bowl from a burl

[John TenEyck]

An arborist friend who brings me logs gave me this maple burl, freshly cut out of a live tree he took down:



The trunk on the left side is maybe 10" across, and the burl area is about 2X that across. The burl doesn't go all the way around the truck, it's more like a letter "C". My friend asked that I make some sort of bowl out of it as payment for the load of logs. I've made a few bowls, some pretty nice by my standards, but I'm not a skilled turner in any way. My one or two experiences trying to turn something with burl wood was not very successful, so I'm wondering if I should try using a grinder with a Lancelot chainsaw carving disk or something similar to rough out a bowl. Any advise is greatly appreciated.

I'm also wondering where I should cut the bowl blank or blanks out of this big chunk of tree. I have all kinds of chainsaws at my disposal as well as a bandsaw lumber mill, so cutting it down shouldn't be a problem once I know where best to cut. Any ideas?

Thanks very much.

John

[John K Jordan]

Deciding where to cut a burl is an art and a guess, not a science. Without x-ray vision it's difficult to picture where the figure is and whether there are objectionable defects. Sometimes burls that look great on the outside have a lot of rot, inclusions, or voids inside. What I generally do is start cutting off the non-burl wood first to see what I find then try to decide. Sometimes most of the best figure is near the outside of the burl so a bowl might be positioned to take advantage of that.

Fortunately, I like to make a lot of smaller things so if a larger idea doesn't work out I might use the wood, perhaps not an option if you are required to make it into a bowl.

[Prashun Patel]

I assume you have turned green wood before. Burls can be prone to moving, warping, and cracking, so take care to dry it properly.

I like to turn burls with the bark side on the rim, and if possible to leave the live edge. The irregularity of the surface makes for an interesting rim.

[Reed Gray]

First thing I would do is cut the log down the pith, or as close as you can get without cutting through any of the burl. This should give you a fairly good look at the wood. Initial thoughts on a piece like this would be to take a center piece out of it for the main bowl, and cores, and that would leave you with two side smaller burl pieces. A lot of the time, burls like this one are kind of cone shaped in towards the center, but some times not... Just have to cut into it to find out. You may just want to cut in towards the center from the tops of the burl, kind of like my first option, where you take the center big piece, and cut the two side pieces. This would probably be best option if the burl is the cone shaped type...

robo hippy

[David Delo]

Can't disagree with any of the previous comments.....good advice. However, I'd first get some anchorseal on it if that hasn't already been done . I'd like to see a pic of the piece rotated 180 degrees & also a top view because you do have a crotch included there. Can't really tell from this view how solid that crotch might be in the Y but you might be able to turn the entire crotch into a flying wing vase or split it in-half and get a couple small bowl pieces. From where the piths are located in the picture, you would lose a little bit of the burl but you've sort of hit the double bonus with this timber in that you have burl & a crotch to work with. Just my 2 cents.

[John TenEyck]

Thanks for the advise so far. Here are some additional photos:







Thanks,

John