Those are two great pieces, Randy. And correct, I feel much better now, I am far away from 1000 pounds of burl hoarded in my shop
But I may match your 100 pounds of stabilized wood
. I wish I had taken better pictures of some of the pieces that went though my hands. I have definitely fallen in love with koa, but I actually like it almost more in its less stripey variations, something like this:
No regular stripes but almost burly with a deep chatoyance / 3-D effect.
Another one of my favorites is buckeye burl if it comes like this
but it's hard to find in that quality, and often has so many voids that it is no fun to work with. Finally, I would list thuya burl as another favorite, something like this:
This wood does not only look good, it also smells great IMHO. But I just had a few blanks of thuya stabilzed and what came back makes me really concerned. I have to try one out, but at a first glance, it almost looks dead - greyish, dull - and seems to have lost its depth. But I have to polish one up to be sure.
So hard to limit it to 3 varieties. There are so many others, especially local Hawaiian woods that are great. Among the most stunning varieties I have seen is Norfolk pine, very boring wood when freshly cut, but when it is spalted, you can make something like this out of it:
These bowls are often turned with very thin walls, and then they become translucent. Beautiful stuff. I ave actually thought about getting a lathe, just for something like this. But since dont even have the time for what I want to do now, I postponed that into retirement
Is anybody else here working with wood besides for knife handles, like turning or furniture making?
Stefan