Advice on shop sawing burl veneer (or not to)

[Dave Mount]

Afternoon folks--

I was given a large black ash burl. The friend that gave it to me was going to make a vanity out of it (in the pic below, it's upside down from that orientation). This thing is large; the ruler on it in the photo is 24" ruler that has another couple inches on it. And, this is only one piece of two, there is a complementary piece that was cut off the top has almost as much burl on it.

I finally steeled myself to cut into it this week; I cut the trunk off, then cut it roughly in half by cutting down the seam that's just left of center in the photo. I'm also a turner so I cut a 3-d pie wedge out of it and turned a natural edge bowl from the cap and a roughed out a couple spheres from the wood below (see pics). I was frankly not that optimistic for what I was going to find, but the burl figure is actually quite nice and the wood is sound and surprisingly dense (black ash is much softer and less dense than white or green ash). The bowl is a little over 8" in diameter and the spheres are a little under 3.5" in diameter.

I used only a tiny fraction of this burl and am impressed with just how much there is. I was originally thinking I'd use it all for turning stock, but having seen the quality of it, I'm thinking more about squaring off a section and resawing some very thin stock (like 1/16") to use as veneer for smallish projects. I have the Grizzly 17" bandsaw so plenty of capacity and power.

I've sawn thin stock before, but never burl; I'm a little concerned about fragility since the tortured grain in the burl basically creates short grain across what would ordinarily be long grain. In addition, I'm wondering if it would be wise to face joint the newly sawn face before each pass (8" jointer with helical head), since I'm thinking sanding will be the only way I can dress the surface once the veneer is sawn, even after it's glued to a substrate.

Anyway, I'm looking for any thoughts, suggestions, or mistakes to avoid before I go any further. This thing has been cut for about 8 years, and has been stored in an unheated building since then. I believe the moisture content is around 17%, though I don't really know how consistent that is throughout or if pin-type meters read properly in the tortured grain of burls. I'm hopeful that at that moisture content I can use a dry wood bandsaw blade rather than one designed for green wood; it turned like dry wood.

Thanks for tips or pointers.

Dave

Capture.JPGCapture7.JPGCapture6.JPGCapture9.JPG

[Zachary Hoyt]

I have sliced a couple of cherry burls on the bandsaw to make peghead overlays, and they went fine with a regular blade. I used a 1/2" 3 TPI TimberWolf. I didn't clean up the face after each cut, and I wouldn't think a jointer would work that well. I use a drum sander now, and it does fine with light passes. Prior to that I used a 12" disc sander and hung on carefully, which was much harder, to make one side flat and then glued the flat side down to the peghead before flattening the visible face.