Day 208: Maple Burl

I spent a couple hours this afternoon cutting and sealing some of the maple burl the club purchased yesterday, the figure in this stuff is incredible.

On the down side I ruined yet another nearly new bandsaw blade cutting this up.  There was a bark pocket in one of the pieces that had a fairly large rock inside of it.  There's really no way to avoid this.  Nails and similar can be avoided with a metal detector (which I don't own) but rocks are a hazard that you just have to deal with.  As woodturners we often deal with what others may consider substandard or even defective wood but the results make it a risk worth taking.

Very tight burl figure running vertically with some nice color and spaltin towards the center.  This piece is approx 9 X 9 X 3.  I prefer to cut across the burl so that you see more eyes than streaks but this perticular piece of burl was better sectioned up in this orientation.














Another piece of the burl, approx 8 X 8 X 2.5.  The figure shows up much better in person and much better before the wax sealant was applied.  This one shows more eye figure becuase if was closer to the edge of the burl so the cut was more across the figure rather than parallel to it.