Make the most of your burl(cindydrozda.com) |
Make the most of your burl(cindydrozda.com) |
I should start taking classes now so that I’ll be ready to pivot to woodworking when AI replaces engineers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burl
Woodworking with these.
In a previous life I did genetic engineering with agrobacterium-mediated transfection. Agro causes galls. Good blast from the past.
I used to avoid burl when I would make wood rings [1]. It's just very hard to predict how it'll behave if you try to steam bend it.
Eric Sloane would have loved this, it's a true reverence for wood.
My wife wanted a wooden engagement ring, and so I fashioned one (well ~10) out of a Pacific madrone burl.
Great material to work with, but wouldn’t recommend wooden bands unless your actual wedding is near!
(Plus, quite a few broke while I was iterating on my technique…)
To be clear, this is one of the reasons my then-girlfriend wanted one, to ensure a speedy engagement!
I more common method for wooden rings is to cut a long thin rip at 1/16th”. Soak it water for 30 minutes. Wrap it around something finger size, put a rubber band around it and let it dry. You can get a good imitation of a glossy epoxy finish with CA/super glue. This gives a lot more strength than a cutout.
https://medium.com/@luajit.io/burl-a-simple-but-flexible-htt...
He told me to do it for extra money, so one summer I went off on my own to start cutting them.
And that's the story of how I learned that sometimes burls form when a tree grows around a fence post. Alternate title: Stihl chainsaws can't cut steel fencing.
Most of them are old fence lines where someone decided attaching barbed wife directly to gum and hickory trees was a good idea.
Veneer gets a bad rap but it’s a great way to make highly-figured wood available to as many people as possible. And since burl and spalted woods are often unstable or have big pits or cracks, it’s a good way to avoid structural problems.
I had enough trouble SHINING MY SHOES. :)
I'd love to see a site like this for the US, Canada and/or Europe. https://openworkshopnetwork.com/
CA glue is easier for me to work with than epoxy and has done a fine job for me.
There are methods to get epoxy deeper, but they require significant equipment. Search for "stabilized wood" if you're curious.
If anything, epoxy often has too much penetration, and I end up doing a first coat or two that disappear fully into the wood, and another thickened one so it actually stays on the surface or joint.