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How best to use a Maple Burl

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I have a large Hard Maple burl. I have sawn the log in half to remove the burl, and sawn the burl in half. I want to turn these into bowls that will maximize the figure, but I don't know how to accomplish that. This is my first opportunity to work with a burl of any kind. I have a 20 inch lathe, and a Oneway Easy Core system, so I will be able to core bowls to minimize waste. Any advise would be appreciated.

Keith
 

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From my experience with burls, and I am not a burl specialist, just get started as a way to learn. From what I see in the photos I don't know that the Easy Core is going to give you many baby burl bowls, maybe some baby bowls with a touch or two of burl. But really, so much of this is unpredictable until you start getting to know what a burl does when you start cutting into it on the machine that spins it.
 
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Working with burl is a little bit of a crapshoot - depending on the burl, but you may have determined your fate with the second of the cuts you described. All is not lost, just a couple options you may be able to cross off your list.
Tom's comment is valid - just get started, you've got two options so far...and for anyone to advise you from a forum post may be expecting too much.
Best of luck, have fun, no regrets, just learning opportunities, and post what comes out the other end.
 
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You have to decide if you want the primary grain on the bottom or natural edge on the rim. If the bottom of the bowl is parallel to a radial line through the center of the log, it will mostly look curly with longer lines. If the bottom of the bowl is perpendicular to that radial line to the center, you'll get more "eyes".
 
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You have to decide if you want the primary grain on the bottom or natural edge on the rim. If the bottom of the bowl is parallel to a radial line through the center of the log, it will mostly look curly with longer lines. If the bottom of the bowl is perpendicular to that radial line to the center, you'll get more "eyes".
That was our thinking in making the second cut. We could turn one piece as a natural edge and the other with the burl in the bottom of the bowl. If nothing else, we will learn a bit more for next time.
 

odie

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The thing I don't like about coring, is it severely restricts your efforts to a particular shape you may not have wanted, if you knew in advance what was in the interior of a piece of wood. The only exception to this, would be from exceptionally large blocks of wood, where you'd maintain a degree of creative choice. That creative choice diminishes with wood that is smaller.

Working with burl is a little bit of a crapshoot - depending on the burl, but you may have determined your fate with the second of the cuts you described. All is not lost, just a couple options you may be able to cross off your list.
Tom's comment is valid - just get started, you've got two options so far...and for anyone to advise you from a forum post may be expecting too much.
Best of luck, have fun, no regrets, just learning opportunities, and post what comes out the other end.

This is a good post by Jeff......

As others have indicated, just give it your best guess, and throw it on the lathe.....make decisions about what to eliminate, and what to preserve, as you go.
 
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If the burl is solid burl front to back I'll get as many cores out of it as possible as every bowl will be burl. There are enough odd size burls to do other projects but rarely do you find solid burl front to back (top to bottom).
 
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Looking a little closer at the pictures, I'm not seeing a lot of eyes in the pieces. Looks to be more swirling grain like in reaction to a wound. These can have some interesting patterns that form without the jumbled patterns formed by a lot of eyes, but it can make choosing a bottom more difficult.

Just go for it. I had what looked like a nice burl kicking around the shop forever. When I finally got to it, it turned out to be an 'onion' burl with absolutely no figure whatsoever...I now know what they look like from the outside.
 
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Well, I decided I would turn one side.of this with the bowl bottom on the outside of the piece, and the other with the bottom at the inside to yield natural edge. Did the first one today and thought I would share a photo. Natural edge will be the next one.20210531_151111.jpg
 
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Looking a little closer at the pictures, I'm not seeing a lot of eyes in the pieces. Looks to be more swirling grain like in reaction to a wound. These can have some interesting patterns that form without the jumbled patterns formed by a lot of eyes, but it can make choosing a bottom more difficult.

Just go for it. I had what looked like a nice burl kicking around the shop forever. When I finally got to it, it turned out to be an 'onion' burl with absolutely no figure whatsoever...I now know what they look like from the outside.
It looks like an onion Burl to me as well. Pressure wash the bark off. That will tell you a lot more. Or just mount it and turn.
 
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