I suppose you all know our area suffered Sandy the super storm. I lost power for nine days and consider myself lucky after seeing areas further east that made our damage look light. However, we did lose lots of trees in the process. Most were oaks and big evergreens. I was driving by one of the hard struck areas when I spied a downed oak next to a driveway. There was a pretty good size burr 10 feet above the base. The home owner cut the tree but stopped at the burr. I don't think they could cut through it. I knocked on the door and asked if they had any takers for the wood. I told them if it was in good shape it had the potential for some nice turnings. Offering to make something for them they gladly gave it to me. It's not easy to get make good use of a big burl. My friendly tree guy was working next door and used his logging hook to maneuver it into a box truck for me.
We unloaded at my house with my tractor. I would guess it was 1500 pounds or so. I decided I would not use that much burr so I called a friend and yesterday we went at it.You really need to plan out your cuts or you end up with a couple caps and a bunch of wedges. After removing the tree portion on the ends we cut the first cap to reveal the inside.
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After that we removed as much of the tree portion as possible to just leave burr.
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Our goal was to end up with usable caps for bowl blanks and as large a block as possible that we could cut into turning blanks for hollow forms 9" on diameter.
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In the end we pretty much accomplished our goal. Then we took four chunks to give to two mutual friends and split the rest between the two of us. I have three large squares, two caps and a bunch of small pieces to make little hollow forms. I remember several posts where people asks how to cut a burr and I thought this might prove helpful to them.
faust
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