I’ve been busy this week working. So my burls haven’t got alot of attention since I piled them up. We’ve also been getting alot of rain. Since it’s so wet I’m going to paint the exposed sides next week. I think I have some old exterior latex paint in the shop that should work. I have never worked with burls but I’m excited to do it. I’ve always admired the terrific figure. To me the natural beauty of the wood could stand on it’s own. I’m always surfing the internet looking at all the spectacular specimens I can find on woodworking websites and the like. The opportunity to research the different wood species and charateristics is interesting and I’m always embracing the opportunity to learn more about woodworking to be the best woodworker I can be. However at this point I don’t think I will get too technical about the wood. I might say something like this is a Black Cherry burl.. it takes about a year to dry in the upper midwest…it looks great finished with 10 coats of gloss lacquer or a danish oil…if i leave it in my shop while i’m working for a a week it should be temporarily sealed to prevent quick drying which leads to excessive cracking.. add your thoughts here.

Ok so I picked out one of the smaller burls and brought it in the shop. I’ve been staring at it, and I’m one of those guys that sees the object in the wood and just has to get it out. Sometimes how a knot or a branch looks is all it takes to say hmmm there’s a owl in there or hey there’s a old man staring out at me. My idea for this burl is to carve it since i don’t have a lathe yet..i’m searching but haven’t found anything i really like for a good price… I thought I’d carve it into a free form bowl with a old mans face in the bottom of the bowl. I’m gonna start hacking away at the inside today.

I recently aquired a number of burls from a logger and now I need to process them. We unloaded his old Ford pickup the other morning and I was suprised to see how many burls could fit in the back of a pickup! As we unloaded he explained what species they were. I found a temporary spot to put the burls next to a pile of walnut logs. I didn’t want to expose the burls to any rain before I had a chance to take a better look at them.

My plan is to clean all the dirt off the burls first. Then I’ll take some pictures so I have a photographic inventory of what the burls look like before they are carved, sliced or turned into their final destiny. I probably should have taken a few pics of the unloading but I wasn’t really thinking about blogging on lumberjocks at the time.

It’s been a couple days now and the local forecast was for rain. So I talked my wife and kids into helping me transfer my burl pile to a spot that’s under cover. We all pitched in and carried the burls over to my lean-to. I think I’ll have the space to keep them behind the mill while I’m sawing lumber and working with them. Let me telll you, with 23 burls of all shapes and sizes I’ll have my work cut out for me for awhile. tbc….

Summary:
1. Unload
2. Clean off
3. Photograph
4. Repile undercover

Next I have to Saw up some Walnut / Cherry / Red Oak / White Oak..been working on a timber frame 20’x20’ from reclaimed barn beams. Now that I see the end of the tunnel on that project this is next.

The cage is made with integral mortise and tenons in hard maple. The upper section sits on a removable base in a rabbet cut in the table base. The base is made from black cherry with maple legs and a lower two piece shelf. The long term plan is to remove the cage top when the iguana outgrows it and make a nice table from the base unit. This is 2 in 1 design.