Nov 06 2009
Stabilized Box Elder Burl
Vedder Mountain Hardwoods has been a sponsor of the Greater Vancouver Woodturners Guild for several years, contributing donations to the silent auction of the West Coast Woodturning Symposium and hosting open houses on several occasions. I always get great wood from the owners, Christina and Mike Rytter, at very reasonable prices. Specializing in spalted and figured Maple, they have the big machinery to cut nearly any dimension a woodworker could require.
Vedder Mountain Hardwoods will soon embark on a new business venture, stabilizing valuable cuts of hardwoods. By chance, I was lucky enough to obtain a sample of Stabilized Box Elder Burl. At the time I had no idea that this was an upcoming extension of their current business so it sat at home for months.
Several months later, when I finally took another trip to visit them and buy some more wood, I found out more about their intention of getting into this new branch of their business. They had done months of research and were very close to having all of the expensive equipment in their facility.
Christina and Mike were especially eager to hear of my findings with the sample I had so I promised that it would be the next piece I mount on my lathe. Part of the reason this piece sat at home was because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it, I just knew I had to have it when I first saw it. It was beautifully burled with wonderful colours typical of Box Elder.
This is the sample piece of Stabilized Box Edler Burl I obtained. As you can see, the burl is quite significant, even for Box Elder. This came to Vedder Mountain hardwoods as a sample of the stabilization that is possible with the vacuum/acrylic resin impregnated/pressurized system they’ll be using. The block is very square (5†along the sides), quite thick (approximately 3â€) and finely finished on all six sides. The biggest concern is whether the resin really impregnates the blank to its entire depth. This being a thick blank, the Rytters were understandably anxious to find out.
The sample came finely sanded and polished. Yes, I should have weighed the blank but I don’t have a scale that would do it justice. Check out the tight swirls and eyes in this burl. How about those colours?
Here you can see the various knots and inclusions that appear to continue deep within the blank. The blank is quite thick in consideration of its other two dimensions. I was not very interested in turning a deep bowl and I certainly didn’t want to reduce the wonderful burl to shavings. These are some of the reasons I couldn’t figure out how to treat this piece. I have recently decided to try pen turning. I realized that I could slice off a ¾†slab and make 4 or 5 pen blanks and still have enough left for a really interesting bowl. You can see the pencil line where I decided to slice off a thin slab from the blank.
Cutting the blank on the Bandsaw. As the blank was being cut, there was a distinct odor of plastic. It recalled memories of grade school shop class when the class was assigned to test various methods of handling various materials. Plastics have a distinct odor when heated by the friction of a power saw. Although the blade on the bandsaw was quite dull, the blank cut without the need for pushing too hard.
The cut surface of the stabilized blank. You can see the blade marks, similar to what you might see if it was just normal wood or normal burl. The good news? YES!!! The stabilizing does penetrate the full depth of a 5X5X3†burl block.
Of course there are many factors that will alter the effectiveness of the wood stabilizing process. Things like the size and integrity and species of the wood blank, the vacuum pressure applied, etc, will all necessitate a trial and error processing method until the learning curve is flattened. I’m looking forward to getting some very interesting stabilized samples in the future.
I’ll write again about the pen blanks and the small bowl.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.