Burl Wood

P.L.

Does anyone sell Burl wood. I was thinking of trying to save the burls I com across and make some extra money. Just wondering if anyone has already tried this and if it is even worth the effort?

Eric Frei

Simply dont get enough big ones here but certainly worth saving.

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Done it

Yeah, save them for sure if it's good timber, this guy is making heaps. Brads Burls & Craftwoods but east coast ones aren't much good, not that I get many, but you can find a use for them. A client of mine makes clocks, like in brads gallery. This is from a Brush box.

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P.L.

Thanks for the replys. I'll save them as I go, and maybe make some $ down the road.

William Greene

here's one carved from aged white birch:

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TreeDimensional

Nice work on the box Mr. Greene, so thats what you folks do on those cold snowy days in N.H.

William Greene

the box was carved by one of my buddies.he is a burl collector.he is searching for a burl market too,but aint found one that pay's what he wants.
he is still huntin'. i will post more photo's of his work (which is for sale) if anybody want's to see

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Done it

I'd like to see a few more pics. The trouble is most people don't know what a burl is, maybe if he showed a before & after picture he might get a better result.

William Greene

here is one that was cut off a red oak tree.kinda looks like an acorn.

we will try and get some pic's of burls on the tree's....so you can see before and after pic's.now that we found a place to post'um but for now they are "off" the tree

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William Greene

this is not burlwood,but kind of unusual

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LeifR

Burl wood is wonderful. Each tree sort has its own character and colour. A piece of art, I would say. They are often so hard that handworking is very difficult. I prefer to use the lathe.
One late evening a friend of mine quite unexpected knocket at my door. He had someting very special to show me, he just couldn't wait until the next day. He had found a football-like piece of wood on the ground, just by chance. A small branch went through the ball, a bit thicker than one inch. So, this burl had grown on this branch until the wind broke the whole thing off and it fell down like a nut. It was hard to say what type of wood i was, but in the lathe it became soon clear that it was elm.
And here is the result.



LeifR

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Eric Frei

They're very nice, love the character and grain.

You'd have a few people want to buy those off you, finding the burls is the hard part I bet.

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arborjockey

when I was in high school we shared a farm with a x-logging family. from the 1920s to the late 60s their logging camps were in nortern california. they traded in their saws for tractors and moved to oregon. with them came the burls black walnut, redwood and maple burls that were from 4 to 9 feet around. rough estimate $40,000-$60.000 amazing stories to go with the wood. I wish I could of recorded the conversasions because like the trees they cut their gone. r.i.p. mculuch family

LeifR

Thank you, Ekka for pleasant reply. These bowls are not for sale, I made them for my friend who found the burl. I have some other bowls and wooden things for sale. But I have no big store, you'll have to come to my back door, then we can talk about it. So, welcome to Norway! Sometimes I visit lokal markets, like this one. (But where are the customers??)


The round big box back left is for a special type of thin, dry bread, a Norwegian speciality. The boxes in front to the right are for making another speciality,named "sylte". It is mostly a Christmas dish made from pork, especially the head of the pig. Sounds delicious? Well, it is!
LeifR

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Eric Frei

That's a good looking dog in your avatar, what part of the pig does he get?

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LeifR

He gets of course the best pieces, while I have to eat the head!
Well, that's a joke. Raptus isn't my dog, he belongs to my friend the eelfisher Torbjoern. I joined him one day he was going to pull his eeltraps. Raptus was looking over my shoulder, slobbering for my lunch packet. He actually eats ANYTHING. He's always hungry, but he's a very friendly dog. I like the picture.
My own dog is named Tinka. She's a dachs, and is the best dog in the world, of course(!)



LeifR

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LeifR

More burls!
We have just had a rather big event in our area, The Animal Show in the heart of the region of Telemark. Three busy days, and 80 000 visitors. The animals are still in focus, but there are A LOT of other things too: Norway's biggest market for agricultural equipment, local food, a lot of junk, and real high quality crafts of several sorts. The knifemakers "Mekka"! Craft competition at a very high level.
Here I found this guy, a burl specialist we might say. His name is Hans Petter Evensen, and I recommended him to join this site.

Hans Petter talking to a customer.

Some of his products;



LeifR

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willem

Very beautiful wood work. Now I know what you Norwegians are doing in those long and dark winters.
I would be interested to see more and get to know your techniques as I'm a starting woodworker

LeifR

Thank you, Willem. I'll try to explain some techniques we use. I'm not familiar with all of them, but I'll try. I think I'll start a new thread about this. What about "From burl to bowl"?
I have some pics now, but I'll have to make some more. It will take a while but we can make a start, and go on later.
Leif.

willem

Good idea, I'm looking forward to the new thread.

newguy18

i'm unclear on what a burl is exactly,for all i know i could have been burning them all along.

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old schooler

Done it

Go up to the top of this page & see my post, & look at the link, they are those lumpy things on the middle tree.

Also LeifR has some pics on his thread, "From burl to bowl"

You have to click Enter.

newguy18

Now i feel bad,i've been burning them or just taking them to landfills,when i could be giving them to members here who can use them.I'll post pics of any i come across.

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old schooler

Done it

Don't feel to bad, some of those woodturning guys are really picky,

They are really good firewood though,

Garry Brockley

Hey im looking at dismantling a hippocastanum with hundreds of them, you can bet no-one will want them when i get it to the floor though it would save a huge clean up job.

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LeifR

Furniture!

Seen at a lokal market. The wood type is probably black alder.

LeifR

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tnt treehouses

I have a maple Burl tree with 8 Burks about 7 foot in circumference. You could probably get 15-20 2 inch slices out of each one. Interested? I live in WA state.

George Valentine

Hi guys,

I was reading with much interest this thread from the beginning, only to realize that it is quite an old thread (considering is from 2008). I was intrigued at some of the observations made by some of you guys that work with trees and do knot know what a burl is.

I didn't realize that, some tree people were totally oblivious and aware of the value of burls, there is, those that grow to a workable size and from wood species that are much sorted out by wood workers, I should know, I have been on of these from a few decades...!

Not every bulge in a tree is a burl and not all burls worth the same (identical size), there are a few "burl hunters" in Australia that, make a good living buy, going bush, armed with a good 4x4 vehicle, a proper trailer, plenty of food, water and petrol/diesel, and a couple of good quality saws one always with a 4 to 6 foot long bars. A chainsaw slabber frame is also a handy thing to have to slice those monsters out where they fell.

Now, I'm not going to go into the technical or legal issues of if the cuts made to remove these burls, damage the trees or not, even tough I have a good work knowledge of what does indeed happen, regardless to what anyone tries to say, the same goes to where "some" these guys go to get these burls, there is, authorized or unauthorized entry in land that can be private, government, councils, National Parks, reserves, etc...so, I leave that to your own conclusion or assumption...!

The definition of a burl, or should I say, what a burl how it forms and why it develop in trees, some more than others, has been extensively discussed in some of the wood related forums I was or am involved with, one in particular that has probably some of the best work (explanations) on burls is the IAP (International Association of Penturners) based in the USA.

There is no better use to a piece of burl than make a pen with it, the require size of a pen blank is about 21mm square x 150mm long or less and there is basically no waste of the precious material, compared with making bowls and other items which wastes 80% of the burls volume into useless shavings. So turners may use a tool that helps reduce the waste on bowls made with burls or any wood called a bowls corer, which cuts the inside portion of the bowl into a usable chunk that comes out with the rounded shape of the inner part of the bowl it was cut from. This can be done more than once on the same initial bowl blank, depending only on the size of the blank at the starting point.

Anyway, I can talk for hours about the burls issue and I only wish that I could get my hands on the burls you guys are wasting, I even would pay for them at pick-up point. For those overseas, obviously that is pretty much out of question due to shipping costs, even tough, USA and Canada specially, imports hundreds of tonnes of Aussie burls, every year...!

However, I'm more than willing to pay for the burls some of you closer to me get. You just need to cut them flash to the tree wood or if not sure, cut the log where they are attached to and bring them home with you. Most burls are small, there is from just a couple of kilos up to 20kilos, these are easily handled but the bigger stuff and I mean big, something that can reach in the vicinity of 1 tone or more, these will need some extra equipment to be handled.

OK so, enough for now, I leave you with a link to one amazing web site from a Aussie "burl hunter". AustralianBurls.com - Burl Harvesting

Disclaimer: The attached web link, is provided as an excellent tool for real information about burls and burls collection/removal from trees for all of you out there, all around the world. I do not know, nor I'm interested in knowing where the trees locations are, nor I'm prepare to say (no evidence) that these people are doing anything wrong or illegal. Australia is a BIG country and some of these locations are that remote that would be like looking for a needle in a hay-stack to pin-point these spots. This is the exact reason why "some" burl hunters, get away with it and no one can see them, hear them or even be aware they are around as distances to roads/civilization is in many cases hundreds of miles away...!

Cheers
George

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ntheep

So are these beautiful burls exported legally???

And just what does cutting a burl off do to a tree? is it harmful?

Some of the peices shown look like the whole tree is sacrificed for just the burls, or a couple of twisted limbs, like the "aussie snake tree" pieces, what species is that??

Curious..............

Bloody nice but eh?!

George Valentine

Sure, there is a big business to a lot of Aussies that export full burls, all over, and as a result, big business from where this burls are received and sold overseas, either in its natural stage or process into all sorts of blanks.

The most expensive burls to buy are the large ones of certain wood species that are used for lamination, where the burl is slice to a perfectly straight and soft wood layer of 2mm tick or less...! These sell for a small fortune, and have do to with its quality to start with...!

There ways to remove "most" of the burls from the trees without killing the trees or harm them badly, these practices are normally performed by some of the "burl hunters" that want and need to come back a few years later and remove some more burl from the same spot in these trees.

Some burls, particularly those surrounding the trunk all around, will kill the tree if all of the burl area is removed in one go, more than 50% and the tree would be in troubles...!

There are lots of small trees/shrubs that form those snake/twisted/curved shaves in the bush, all around Darwin, I know because I lived there for 6+ years. One of the easiest places to find these snake type woods/branches, are the mangroves all around Darwin. The wood itself is quite good for wood-turning, I only wish that I brought some with me, better still, not being this far away from Darwin, so that I could do a regular trip every so often and fill-up with NT timbers...!

Try Mandorah way coast line, on the other side of the harbor...!

Cheers
George

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