| Big Leaf Maple Burl |
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Bigleaf Maple (acer macrophyllum) At our June meeting we were very fortunate to have Bob Rosand as our demonstrator. We were privileged to watch him turn one of his trademark Christmas ornaments as well as a new style of box he has producing. For both the body of the ornament, as well as the box he used bigleaf maple burl. Bigleaf maple is not a locally grown wood. The tree's main range is the Pacific Northwest and western most Canada where it densely grows along streams or mixed into the adjoining forests. This is a long lived tree reaching 300 years of age with a diameter of 30" and a height of 100'. Larger specimens tend to get burls around their base. Some of these burls can reach amazing sizes making it readily available. E-bay is a good source of bigleaf maple burl, with as many as 50 lots up for bid at any one time, but caution is required when purchasing there. The web has a reputation for dishonest people who will take your money and run. This is the exception not the rule. I have purchased from E-bay several times with good results. When bidding, study the picture of the wood closely and also give consideration to the size. Some of the wood on E-bay sells for extremely high prices (don't they realize this stuff grows on trees). There are many companies selling bigleaf maple turning blanks on the web. A quick search on Google.com for "bigleaf maple burl" turned up several results results. Remember when purchasing online that shipping can cost almost as much as your wood. Now that you have your bigleaf maple burl, how will it turn? Well the Woods of The World CD-ROM reports that it has good turning properties with 80% of the pieces yielding fair to excellent results. As a maple it falls in with the softer maples between red maple and box elder in hardness and weighs about the same as red maple. Being a softer wood it is prone to tearout. To reduce tearout keep your tool as sharp as possible for finishing cuts. Bob Rosand also made use of as oil based sanding sealer to lubricate and stiffen the wood fibers. This sanding sealer is just a thinned down version of whatever finish you will be using. Bigleaf maple sands well. I have not had the problems with sanding that I usually get with softer woods. Any finish will work well, but I prefer an oil based finish, this seems to bring out the depth of the burl grain better than other finishes. Although I manage to get a lot of my wood for free locally I still buy an occasional piece of wood. Bigleaf maple burl is definitely one wood I would recommend. |