Make the most of your burl

[aczerepinski]

I adore burl. Burl coffee tables, cell phone cases, jewelry boxes, guitars, you name it.

I should start taking classes now so that I’ll be ready to pivot to woodworking when AI replaces engineers.

[dyauspitr]

Ha it’s already a severely impacted field. Every other computer programmer that doesn’t live in a city is a woodworker.

[abeppu]

So the works Cindy displays are beautiful but is wood turning the way to "make the most of your burl"? I feel like there's a value that's related the surface area you can get out of a given burl. If you have a burl, are you better off trying to cut thin panels with parallel slices? With turning, though a skilled artisan can produce a beautiful result, don't you lose out on a lot of volume?

[MarkMarine]

It is really really difficult to make any thing from a burl that is within the range of a hobbyist that isn’t turned. The grain is impossible, and they are really hard so working it with normal tools (a hand plane or a spoke shave) is just going to tear out as the direction of grain changes. I’ve never seen a veneer cutter that could handle a burl that was within hobbyist reach, but a lathe is going to cost you under 1000$ and probably under 500$ if you get a used one with good capacity.

[tossit444]

I'm assuming this is a video, but I see nothing on the page signifying there is supposed to be one.

[ZiiS]

Have you blocked Vimeo?

https://vimeo.com/1033412702/5ba4a41653

[echelon]

I can't watch the video, so I had to look this up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burl

Woodworking with these.

In a previous life I did genetic engineering with agrobacterium-mediated transfection. Agro causes galls. Good blast from the past.

[Lammy]

I learned that word from Mastodon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMeAEBujd7w

[onionisafruit]

I didn’t know what it was (clicked thinking it was curl related). Thanks for the link, it was an interesting read.

[ejs]

This is great.

I used to avoid burl when I would make wood rings [1]. It's just very hard to predict how it'll behave if you try to steam bend it.

[1] https://woodaround.com

[aaronblohowiak]

why'd you stop?

[ggm]

Once in high school woodwork class I had to make an artificial burl out of scraps to try and show off some wood turning fu I didn't actually have. Open day does that: look like you know what you're doing.

Eric Sloane would have loved this, it's a true reverence for wood.

[NoboruWataya]

Wonderfully early 00s-style website.

[eitally]

I highly recommend this National Geographic series, Filthy Riches. It has an episode about "burl hunters".

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3654672/

[michael_forrest]

This is an absolute masterclass in remote presentation. Cindy does incredible work.

[jumploops]

This is awesome.

My wife wanted a wooden engagement ring, and so I fashioned one (well ~10) out of a Pacific madrone burl.

Great material to work with, but wouldn’t recommend wooden bands unless your actual wedding is near!

[vvvv]

Why not?

[ada1981]

I passed this up for the last few days thinking BURL was some obscure programming term / language. Really glad I decided to investigate today!

[ada1981]

Actually, if you want to make the most out of your (instance of) bUrl: a simple but flexible http3 testing framework, here is your guide!

https://medium.com/@luajit.io/burl-a-simple-but-flexible-htt...

[csours]

I spent a week burl hunting with my uncle in Alaska. Good times! (except for the mosquitos)

[Loughla]

I used to find burls with a neighbor. He was an amazing wood turner.

He told me to do it for extra money, so one summer I went off on my own to start cutting them.

And that's the story of how I learned that sometimes burls form when a tree grows around a fence post. Alternate title: Stihl chainsaws can't cut steel fencing.

[toolslive]

Buck eye burl tops are quite common in custom shop guitars and basses.

[shermantanktop]

It’s essentially thick veneer.

Veneer gets a bad rap but it’s a great way to make highly-figured wood available to as many people as possible. And since burl and spalted woods are often unstable or have big pits or cracks, it’s a good way to avoid structural problems.

[RickJWagner]

Burled wood banjo resonators look great.