Make the most of your burl | Hacker News Reader

Make the most of your burl

cindydrozda.com

104 pointsmichael_forrest48 comments

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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.

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

sounds like there's a market for a woodshop in the city, gym membership style.

There's already one in Seattle: https://www.isgoodwoodworks.com/

Isn’t that what maker spaces are?

Maker spaces tend to focus on high-tech tools, like 3D printers, laser cutters, electronic cutters (cricut/silhouette), etc. Some also have woodshops but that's less common and typically requires more space.

In the UK there are maker spaces of all varieties. But you are right, woodworking spaces need room for the equipment. If you are a hand-tool only woodworker, then there isn't really a need to use someone else's (unsharpened) tools.

I'd love to see a site like this for the US, Canada and/or Europe. https://openworkshopnetwork.com/

They have those but it’s never the same in a shared space.

My town (Madison WI) has one. You can rent time or do classes. I kind of want to do it but I already have too many hobbies.

Men's Sheds if you're in Australia.

https://mensshed.org/

I highly recommend Frank Howarth’s YouTube channel. I could watch him work for days and he is a great introduction to everything wood turning, from artistic inspiration of wood choice to tools and process. He’s just a pleasure to watch.

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?

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.

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

Have you blocked Vimeo?

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

I'm not OP, but I can't see the video on my mobile browsers either (even after disabling any adblock).

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.

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

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

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

why'd you stop?

Took too much time

Those are beautiful! And I love the way you get seemingly continuous grain all the way around. If you no longer work on these, I would love to learn more about the processes you use for the pressure infusing and the finishing.

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.

Wonderfully early 00s-style website.

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

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

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

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!

Why not?

Fingers change size, but wooden rings can't be stretched.

They can be sanded, just get a thick ring!

Yes, but that's generally not something you want to be doing the week before a wedding. It's _very_ easy to forget to do, and hard for the best man to run around and fix while you panic.

I had enough trouble SHINING MY SHOES. :)

Unless you use an epoxy of some sort, they’re quite prone to breaking over time — I only used natural beeswax.

(Plus, quite a few broke while I was iterating on my technique…)

To be clear, this is one of the reasons my then-girlfriend wanted one, to ensure a speedy engagement!

If they are made by cutting a ring shape out of wood, the grain is too weak for long term wear.

I more common method for wooden rings is to cut a long thin rip at 1/16th”. Soak it water for 30 minutes. Wrap it around something finger size, put a rubber band around it and let it dry. You can get a good imitation of a glossy epoxy finish with CA/super glue. This gives a lot more strength than a cutout.

Why not just use epoxy? It’s pretty easy to work with.

Thin CA will wick into the grain of thin veneers acting as a stabilizer. Epoxy is thicker and doesn't penetrate as deeply.

There are methods to get epoxy deeper, but they require significant equipment. Search for "stabilized wood" if you're curious.

I don't think that is true- I build and restore both wooden and fiberglass boats with epoxy, and have used it in almost every possible way. There are different thicknesses of epoxy with different properties, but the ones specially designed for penetrating deeply into wood - such as clear penetrating epoxy sealer will indeed penetrate extremely deep into wood, the manufacturer claims 9-16". In practice, almost any epoxy will penetrate at least 1" into wood.

If anything, epoxy often has too much penetration, and I end up doing a first coat or two that disappear fully into the wood, and another thickened one so it actually stays on the surface or joint.

> Why not just use epoxy? It’s pretty easy to work with.

CA glue is easier for me to work with than epoxy and has done a fine job for me.

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

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...

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

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.

We have quite a few nice looking burls on our property and its the exact same story.

Most of them are old fence lines where someone decided attaching barbed wife directly to gum and hickory trees was a good idea.

i use a metal detector. some of these trees can be a stash[cashe] and you may encounter things hidden long ago, most of them not good for your chain, some of them not good for you.

There's that ever-so short moment between "Man, this wood is hard!" and "Oh, crap"

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

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.

Burled wood banjo resonators look great.

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