Earlier this year I followed a Craigs List ad for some Pacific Northwest “maple burl” that was at least 75 years old. The story was that the father was a PNW logger and acquired some timber over the years that had been stored until the son decided to sell the stock. Being a sucker for wood with a good backstory, off I went. I should have known better but…
The dealer had a bunch of slabs and blanks of various species including spalted maple, curly walnut, and a few cuts of less common woods. Almost all was live edge, something I don’t use, and all of it needed to be re-sawn or planed. Not seeing anything I could use for boxes, I started to leave when the dealer showed me what he said were turning blanks of spalted maple and maple burl. It didn’t look like maple to me (it’s not white and it’s not hard) but it did have some interesting figure. And here’s where I got into trouble. I’m not a good wood guy; I see pieces I like and can use and we’re off to the races. I lack the education and experience to know what large chunks of wood are composed of. Seeing a bunch of figure and some depth in this pile of scrap, I opened the wallet and threw money at it. Big, expensive, mistake.
A month or so later, I started to cut some of it up and pieces would crumble or shatter on the tablesaw. I took an awl to it and found that not only was the wood wet in places (outdoor storage), most of it was “punky” with soft spots and voids throughout. Yes, I’m that slow. A little more research revealed this was not maple burl but Mappa burl, a species of European poplar. Lucky me. But, as you can see in the pictures, the blanks I have don’t have a lot of “burl” eyes in them. Fast forward to Christmas 2024 and I decided to turn some of this on the lathe, just so it wouldn’t go to waste. With all the punk, I had several pieces take a big catch or two and quite a few missiles launch from the lathe across the shop.
Since “Miss Thang” has a soft spot for me and a bigger one for fancy wood, I decided to cut some bowls as one of her Christmas presents. The blank was 6X8, so too big to cut down on the saw and my 12-21 lathe was put to the test with an unbalanced log. Low speeds and sharp tools got it roughed out and then four days of shaping and sanding. And cussing…a lot of cussing. It turned out that the blank had some big bug voids and some rot which I managed to cut through. Once the roughing was done, I taped over the outside holes with painters tape and filled the inside surface with marine epoxy. I didn’t want to fill the whole bowl with epoxy so I just filled the voids. The next day, I cut it back and stabilized the holes from the outside. Finally, I was able to get it shaped to where it was presentable.
Luckily, I recently switched to Nova chucks and that made this a lot easier. Once the stock has tenons, the chucks can handle the rest of the project with ease. I used a small set of jaws for most of the work and then flipped the bowl over on some wide jaws to shape the bottom. Cole jaws let me finish the majority of the bottom and sides after cutting off the tenon.
There was considerable tear-out because this wood is so soft. Working up from 80 grit to 220 fixed most, but not all, of this. Finishing also was not fun. Because of the varied density and texture of the wood, I used a lot of sanding sealer to seal it up. Still, I had areas that would take gloss and some that just wouldn’t. I’m using Mylands sanding sealer and friction polish which gives me great results on better wood but only so-so on this.
I tried several different finishes that have worked for me in the past but nothing really popped and everything made the less figured areas beige. Oil makes the soft areas blotchy, brush lacquer doesn’t flatten out very well and forget about anything poly. After several failures, I lightly sanded out to 1500 and just slowly added friction finish until it wouldn’t take anymore. Then, I cut that back and tried to gloss it up. It finished out at about 80 percent gloss with some of the soft areas still being kind of dull. I’m thinking that sealing and then shooting with instrument lacquer might be a better approach but it’s too cold for that nonsense in the garage in December.
With the frequent re-finishing, these took a week to complete but “Miss Thang” is well pleased with her new firewood. And that’s all that really counts.
