Help with turning burls

Nick Clayton

Member
Messages
38
Location
Sudbury, MA
I wrote to a member for some help and they suggested I post out on the forum to get as many opinions as possible. Here's some background, I've had my lathe for 1.5 years now and haven't had as much time to play on it as I should. I played hooky from work on Monday to do a lumber run and one of the places that I have had never been to before had some burls that I was immediately bitten by:rofl:. Since I have never turned burls I didn't get anything very large, but I'm now stuck with the problem of how to turn them....:huh:
I cleaned up some of the wood to see what was hiding under the bark/wax. For the pictures I simply sprayed them with alcohol and the background wood is Jatoba for those interested in a color reference.
The Mesquite, Pecan and Thuya are dry.
Mesquite.JPGPecan.JPGThuya.JPG
The Tasmanian Musk and Brown Mallee are coated in wax.
TazMusk.JPGBrMallee.JPG
Don't flame me too badly, but my plans were to section them into smaller pieces to make items I could give as gifts (bottle stoppers, duck calls, x-mas tree ornaments etc).
Because the figure goes in all directions I'm at a loss as to how they should be sliced and mounted. Also is there anything special that needs to be done to the blanks to stabilize them prior to turning so they don't fly apart; wood hardener or some stabilizer? How about filling any checks w/ cyano so that more of the burl could be used.
Any advice, would be much appreciated.:thumb:
Thanks in advance.
 
Wow Nick, nice haul for sure!

I think your idea of making various small things is a good one, as it will give you a feel for how the burls turn, and you will be able to get a lot of gifts out of those pieces.

In cutting them up, you don't have to slice up the whole burl in one go, just take a slice off and then turn your "whatever" and this will give you an idea of how the next piece should be cut and or orientated.

Have fun, take pictures! :thumb: :wave:
 
I don't think there is a wrong way to cut a burl since the grain goes every which way. You can put them in a pressure pot and inject resin or dissolved plexiglass into the wood. Some of the stuff from the edges can be cast with a colored resin to fill the voids. PM me for some leads to where you can find out how to do this. Don't want to be accused of pirating members. I got kicked off a different site for posting a link to here.
 
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I don't think there is a wrong way to cut a burl since the grain goes every which way. You can put them in a pressure pot and inject resin or dissolved plexiglass into the wood. Some of the stuff from the edges can be cast with a colored resin to fill the voids. PM me for some leads to where you can find out how to do this. Don't want to be accused of pirating members. I got kicked off a different site for posting a link here.
Dale, I'd sure like to see some more info on the subject, so if you have a good link, do share :D

Sharing a link to good info will not get you kicked off here! :wave:
 
Thanks Dale. When we started this site, one of our primary goals was to share information. We don't care if people get it from other sites...it's not like we're trying to get the site hit count high for better advertising stats. ;)
 
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