Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Red oak burl HELP
John H Davis in NC
>I got a red oak burl yesterday. It is 37" tall and has a circum, of 59". I have never had anything this big!!!. I don't know where to start cutting. I don't want waste alot of wood, or end up with a odd usless pieces. Thanks for any help. P.S. If you read my post about the un wanted gift. I did it while left hand going for the off switch and right hand moving wood out of the way.
Thanks agisn for any tips on cut a Large burl. John
Re: Red oak burl HELP
Peter Teubel
>I recently got a 36" diameter oak burl cap (16" thick). I was agonizing over it the same way you are now. I originally wanted to turn the whole thing as one big bowl (coring the center, of course), as my lathe would handle it nicely. But after tripping over the darn thing for weeks, I finally decided to just cut the thing up into more mangable pieces....since I would be able to get more $ for many smaller finshed pieces than a couple large ones. I blocked out a few good sized pieces for hollow form blanks and the rest were just cut into as large a piece as I could. The scraps became a great number of pen blanks.