Playing around with a Sheoak Burl (WIP)

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cotedupy

cotedupy

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I haven't ever done anything like this before, but I thought I'd share my progress in case anyone is interested / wants to try the same and can then avoid the many pitfalls I'll inevitably stumble into...

Yesterday I sawed a burl off a piece of Sheaok that I found in a friend's firewood pile. Sheoak is quite a pretty, reddish, very dense Australian hardwood. I would strongly advise against trying to use a blunt old handsaw for this job. The wood I think (or hope) is relatively well-seasoned, it tends to be when you buy firewood here. It looked a bit like a chicken drumstick:
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I posted another thread asking for some advice, which unanimously called for sealing the cut end, leaving it to fully cure, and then to stabilize it. That unfortunately far exceeded my reserves of patience, so today I cut a bit off the end to experiment with it, and see what it looked like, the rest I will keep to properly dry I think. Here it is after being cut:
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The bit I got was about large enough to make one handle and one ferrule, neither of them without their imperfections, tho both should look alright once epoxy filled:
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The top one is wine oak staves, and shaped currently for a gyuto. It's a lot larger than it will end up being, I tend to leave them that way until I know the knife it will go on, and then can be further cut down/shaped. Here it is after rough sanding and a bit of oil:
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The wood was from the outside of the burl, and is a fair bit lighter than the wood toward the middle. Here you can see some hairline surface cracks, which presumably is why everybody suggests stabilizing burl:
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This second was going to be a petty handle, but as I was shaping it, it just turned into the perfect size & shape for a cleaver, of which I have a few, so I left it like that. The wood is darker and nicer (imo). This has only been sanded to 40 grit and oiled so far because I need to fill it:
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TBC...
 
Looks interesting, look forward to the finished handle.

Think the reason for stabilitizing is to avoid it cracking later on due to expanding/shrinking sessions and the alignment (or lack thereof) of the wood ores.
 
Dhoff said:
Looks interesting, look forward to the finished handle.

Think the reason for stabilitizing is to avoid it cracking later on due to expanding/shrinking sessions and the alignment (or lack thereof) of the wood ores.
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Cheers for the info! It's not something that I know anything about (clearly).

I tend with my handles to use a lot of coats of wax and oil with sanding in between, so hopefully that might help mitigate it to some extent...
 
birdsfan said:
That is some pretty wood grain. Actually, there seems to be few imperfections/bark inclusions than I would have expected. I hope you got to use a power saw for this part of the process!
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Alas not 😬

Tho I do think it might be wise for me to locate one before tackling any more of it!
 
So I fixed up and put the cleaver handle on my favourite Leung Tim sangdao.

This is what it looked like before, this was one of the first wa handles I made and put on a knife. It was nice enough (especially the ferrule), but I've got better at making handles since then so thought I'd try changing it.
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As well as the knot imperfection in the new handle, there were a number of hairline cracks that became apparent after sanding, which I then carved out with a chisel and filled with epoxy (this is my Blue Period).
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This is the end result once all finished and installed. Slightly shoddy night time pictures, but it gives an idea...
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Dhoff said:
Looks great!
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Cheers, it's a nice handle for sure, I think the wood colour would probably work better on a non KU finish. But I'm still pretty happy.

We'll see if it starts warping and cracking as people have warned it might. There was certainly some moisture in the wood still, as something happened that I've not seen before - when drilling for the tang near the edge of the wood, the heat from the drill forced some moisture out of the wood, and you could see a few tiny specks of liquid form on the outside. Better out than in I suppose!
 
Made today what I think will turn out to be one of the nicest I've done. It's only sanded to 320 and one coat of mineral oil so far, but should look really lovely when I've finished properly.

Sheaok burl, beach plastic spacer, and fire burnt red gum ferrule (actually the same ferrule from the handle I removed from the cleaver above.)

Amazing what you can do with firewood and rubbish!

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Yeah, that sheoak does look good. Here's to hoping it's dry enough so that it won't crack in the future.

I'd like to hear a bit more about how you did the blue epoxy,
 
billyO said:
Yeah, that sheoak does look good. Here's to hoping it's dry enough so that it won't crack in the future.

I'd like to hear a bit more about how you did the blue epoxy,
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Yeah we'll see about the cracking 😬 I'm going to keep oiling it, so fingers crossed. And if it does start cracking I'll probably carve them out a bit and put some epoxy in. Very much a work in progress!

The blue is just regular Araldite 5 min clear epoxy, mixed with blue mica powder (pic attached). Which is pretty readily available in a wide range of colours, very cheap, and you only need the smallest pinch of it.

Then just slightly carve out the cracks / faults with a small chisel or file to make sure they're deep enough for the epoxy to hold, and free of any bits of wood or dust, then sand off the excess when set. Ideally you want to sand the epoxy to around 1000 grit or more to get it to to really shine again.
 

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I'm sure there are better ways to do it than the above, that's just what I've found works for me, through a bit of experimentation. And it's quite easy :)
 
Looks really good in the pics. If it looks better in person than you have a looker for sure!
 
Looking great! Really seems (to my untrained eye) that your skills improve rapidly every time you post.
 
juice said:
Sun! Tomorrow!
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Yeah, yeah. Did I mention my debilitating lack of patience...? ;) (They're still crappy iphone 4 pictures, but certainly less grainy in daylight!)

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I've also learned from the other thread that this is not a burl, it's a 'nurl'. Which is a growth on the trunk of a tree, rather than the root system.
 
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cotedupy said:
I've also learned from the other thread that this is not a burl, it's a 'nurl'. Which is a growth on the trunk of a tree, rather than the root system.
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Huh, I tend to take things literally. I have been unable to confirm with my google-fu. From whence doeth this information stem? :)
 
Dhoff said:
Huh, I tend to take things literally. I have been unable to confirm with my google-fu. From whence doeth this information stem? :)
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Came from @29palms at the end of this thread: Burl Question

Makes sense, as this was on a log that I'm pretty certain wouldn't have been at the base of the tree. Google didn't turn up much for me either, but there were a couple of woodworking forums that talked about the difference.

(Also called a bunion).
 
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