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Maine wood source?

Joined
Feb 21, 2011
Messages
374
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Location
Elkhart, IN
Website
www.riccsdesigns.com
Going to be traveling around Maine the second week of October. I know it's rare that someone wants to give up their sources but thought I would try anyway. Anyone have any suggestions on sources for reasonably priced burls?
 
I know there is a turning club that meets at the Woodcraft store in Portsmouth NH. Other than that, no clue. I was out there in May. Saw a lot of nice wood. Never did get to check out a guy down the road in Berwick who had a saw mill....

robo hippy
 
Reasonable and burl usually don't meet in the same sentence. Not an abundance of hardwoods in Maine. Huge rocks and pine trees are what the glacier left from scraping by. Some of the beaches aren't even sand since sand is scarce. Beautiful white pine back in the day. You could find 3' wide pieces slabs back in the early 1970s, but that stuff is rare now. My wife was born in Maine and we traveled there many times. Never bought a stick of wood there, but lots of antique flat woodworking tools. In California you could buy burl at roadside stands, in Maine you buy lobster at road side stands.
 
Try Rare Woods USA. They are in Mexico Maine. Luke is great to work with and they have a lot of very rare woods. Not sure about burls.
 
I googled "Maine tree species" and found a state sponsored listing and there was no shortage of types of hardwoods including walnut, maple, red oak, black-white -green ash. In the far north central part of Minnesota there is bog land that produces many black ash burls and I thought I had read where Maine has similar country. Here is an example of a Minnesota black ash burl bowl at about 12 inch diameter.
24003Bowl2.jpg
 
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