cutting burl wood

[evergreen]

i was wondering if there is a special way of cutting small pices of burl wood. I know that most people turn burl but i only have some small pieces and woulf like to make panels for some small boxes.

[Den Socling]

I don't have anything to contribute to your question about cutting burls but I love your bikini!  8)

[metalspinner]

evergreeen,
Are you referring to the orientation of the blade to the wood?  Or the best tool for the job?

In theory, the orientation of the saw to the grain shouldn't really matter.  The figure should be on any face that is exposed.  But sometimes, the burl wood will meet log wood and that orientation should have the long grain of the wood exposed. 

I had some small pieces that I cut for the same kind of project you have in mind.  If the burl will be a panel in a framed lid, I don't think you need to worry about any grain orientaion causing you trouble.

I resawed mine with this blade.  It is very thin and leaves a surface smooth enough to sand...

http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/woodslicer-resaw-bandsaw-blades.aspx

[evergreen]

so what about drying, cut the burl green and then dry or allow it to sit for awhile then cut?

[metalspinner]

I've only really used dryed burls for projects like you have described.

But once, as an experiement, I resawed a 6"x6" x 10' burled cant into 1/4"x 6" boards with disasterous results.  The eyes and figured areas distorted wildly in every which direction. :'(

[Den Socling]

metalspinner has it right when he says that orientation doesn't matter. The grain in a burl swirls in different directions. He is also correct when he mentioned the disastrous results when drying. This is again caused by the grain that shrinks in different directions. Dry slowly with fingers crossed.

[Den Socling]

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,14752.0.html

You may find parts of that thread interesting.

[jim king]

Here are a couple of peices of burl furniture that turned out quite well.

[evergreen]

these are beutuful pieces, my burl will never compare too small. So I take it that the best is to cut it after it has dryed in the natural state? I read some that the burl on the tree should not be cut until the tree dies, this would accomplish the same thing.

[jim king]

We get smaller burls also .  We just cut them with the chain saw and put them in the drying shed for a year or so.

[jim king]

We made a simple platform out of angle iron. some bearings and a simple router to clean up the chainsaw cut of the burls.  It works great.  Some sanding and you have a table top ready to finish.

[metalspinner]

That's a sweet rig you have there, Jim.  I wish I had room for a permanent set up like that.

Is the router carriage held and moved by hand?

[WIwoodworker]

For smaller burls I usually choose to cut with the grain. I seem to have better luck with drying if I cut that way. As far as the drying goes I just use miniature stickers to stack the wood and let it dry.

[evergreen]

what happens if you cut cross grain? I am looking at something that would be 1in or less thick.

[jim king]

The nice thing I have found working with burls is that the twisted wild grain is so tied togther it is difficult to make them crack.  I have made cupboard doors out of 1/2 inch thick slices with no problem.

[Den Socling]

Jim,

That's nice work as usual. The amboyna that I worked with had cracks in the sapwood when it got here. The twisted grain didn't want to follow the drying of the sapwood. How about yours WIwood? There is probably nothing you can do about that.

Den

[jim king]

Den;

As you can see from the photos the burls dont have  sapwood.  I have no idea why.

[WIwoodworker]

When I cut small burls across the grain I end up with more checking. I'm talking about burls in the 12" to 16" diameter range. So once they're cut it's kind of like keeping a piece of firewood from checking.

If the burl is from a branch then there's almost 100% chance of checking/splitting along the pith so cutting with the grain allows me to cut it out or leave it in a piece that I can trim it out of later. If the burl is a cap from the side of a trunk then I try to cut the direction that the majority of the grain seems to be going. It almost never dries flat so I always need to joint/plane/sand to get it where I want it.

I generally make cuts 1" thick and resaw when dry to end up with book matched pieces 1/4" to 3/8" finished thickness. It's not very scientific but it seems to work for me.

[gotwood]

Just a thought about slicing burls - if you are to take a burl cap and slice it...the direction in which you cut can make a vast difference in the type of figure that you're going to end up with.  Some burls will have swirling grain in many directions, in which case the direction of cutting really doesn't matter, but many burls are a closely grouped bunch of birdseyes (uncontrolled bud growth).  If you were to slice a burl cap such as this off along the side, you would get a pattern which is somewhat similar to curly figure (you're seeing these birdseyes from the side).  If you were to slice the top off of the burl cap, you'd get closely bunched clusters of birdseyes.  Cutting on an angle can yield a mixture of both.  There's really no absolute certain way to tell what the grain is doing until you make a few outer cuts, but paying attention to the grain after this point can certainly provide you with different figure in your boards.