Woodturning - Roughing Out Bowl blanks and Cutting Boards

hi everybody Welcome to Sprague woodturning my name is Jim so this week we're going to do some roughing out so we're going to take logs and turn them into bull blanks and get them ready for the lathe along with that we're also going to be using my oval cutting cookie rig I've got a bunch of Walnut that I want to process with that and we're going to be working on some Maple walnuts a little bit of locust and there's actually some Butternut as well there might be some other stuff in there too so you know that's what we want to do it's starting to get hot here and the bugs are starting to come out so I want to get this stuff processed before uh basically you get eaten alive when you're outside working so that's the main reason for it and before it gets too hot all right so what we're going to do is move outside and I'll show you exactly what I want to do in this video and uh the next video so what you're looking at here is three Walnut logs and what we're going to do for the most part with all these is put them up on the oval cookie cutting rig which I still have to set up but I'll show you kind of briefly how that gets set up along with that we've got some Butternut here this was a yard tree that died and had to come down uh unfortunately it is just cracked really bad uh two butt pieces here will definitely yield some um some Bowl blanks for sure four to eight probably be able to core some of that as well uh I don't know we'll have to pick through this to see if there's anything there that we're going to be able to use but kind of on the smaller side really uh why gross rings on it too unless the cameras picking that up or not and along with that uh here's a pine Burl and uh if you've uh if you've subscribed to my channel you've seen our Pine burls worth buying or not so what we will probably do this could be a spruce one too uh we'll slice this Grill in half and see what it looks like but if it's full of pitch we'll have to pass on it this is a big Walnut Pearl and uh along with the Burl hopefully we're going to be able to get at least four to six bull blanks out of the trunk of the tree that the pearls attached to that's a big old gnarly piece of maple Maple burl I believe this is Walnut and while you may look at that and say well what are you going to do with that I mean this here is an awesome risen resin casting piece it just doesn't get any better than this so all I'll probably do is just cut this up into sections and then dry it as it is and then that way we'll be able to make vases with it and this kind of stuff ah this is actually a big pile of maple this is probably two years old now but there are some really large crotch pieces in here so we'll certainly get at those there's another big crotch piece right here anyway there's lots of stuff to do here this is actually a Catalpa burl something that you don't see too much of but most of this Maple is going to be firewood might be able to put some of it on the cookie cutting rig but we'll have to see the other thing now that of course I'm doing resin casting this is a purple sand cherry this was a tree that was on our yard and it died so we decided to cut it out and take it down I'm going to cut pieces you know like this size maybe different sizes and that way we can bundle them all up and make vases with this and this is a burning bush that died on us as well so I'll be doing the same thing with that but before we do any of this stuff let's get this this uh cookie cutting rig set up and running and we'll get this molded cut up today at least and then we'll move on to the other stuff probably tomorrow all right so the way this works is that's a battery pack this is actually the line for the winch this is the winch that goes on to my log trailer and I've just got a set of vice grips holding it down below I don't know that's all I need all the pressure is up this way so that's not really a big deal the line comes up over a pulley and it's supposed to be on that pulley but it isn't and then it goes down onto the rig but yeah all you need is just a simple little battery booster pack like you see here and uh this thing works great so in a perfect world the logs would be laying out in front of the rig and what you would do is roll them on to the rig and they would just sit in that little cradle there and then once you've got the log on to the rig you would lift it all right and then I still have to hook up the chainsaw rig and it's like a chop saw I'll do that next but uh I thought it would just kind of show that it's been almost three years since I've used this uh it isn't level that's another thing it would be probably best if it was level I just yanked it out of the corner over there because uh I just it's too hard to shoot anything back in there but ideally the logs will be out in front of this and then you would put this down if this had weight on it it would naturally go down there are three lifting points so that it lifts evenly and uh yeah I mean it's it's not when we made this uh it actually worked out better than I thought it was going to so you know what I'll do is I'll get a log up on here and then we'll lift this and then set up the chop saw attachment so when I started my professional woodturning career I had no intentions of ever doing cutting boards and then my wife said no you know you should add some variety to your booth when you're at these juried art shows and like yeah I get that but you know you go to any of these woodworking shows and there's usually about you know a thousand people doing cutting boards so one of the things that I did to make myself different from them was to make these oval cutting boards that we're going to see here shortly and along with that I was fractal burning them and those two things again to to make it in the Arts and Crafts world at these shows you need to be different from others so that's basically where this came from and along with that people that I would meet there would say hey I've got a tree I'm taking it down do you want it and if it was something that was desirable to me then I would certainly go and get it but a lot of times you end up with a lot of this smaller wood that for the most part was firewood so I decided to make this rig along with my two sons and I'm really glad that I did this really helped with my bottom line when I was at shows and I'm able to use the whole tree and not see parts of it go to firewood I think before I cut up this log that'll actually cut this crotch piece out of here should be some nice figure in here the smart thing would have been to cut this off prior to putting it up on the rig it would have had so much issues with it but you know sometimes I'm not the sharpest tooling the you know what I mean all right let's set up the chop saw piece all right so here is a saw mounted in the rig and like I said it works just like a chop saw this is a custom Mount that I made this was off of an original if you wanted to see cut two by fours you use this Mount and anyway I'm I adopted it um the welding on this isn't exactly the greatest but you know what I don't think it's going anywhere and uh you can adjust this this way with the bolts on the side now usually I've got it all the way over this gives me about an inch and a half or sorry an inch and a quarter space through here is what I'm looking for and um yeah this is a 28 inch blade or 20 inch bar I should say and I'm using a 365 Husqvarna and absolutely awesome saw I don't think you can get this model anymore but I really like this model anyway we're going to advance the log and start cutting some some nice boards up here so I started this video where I've already kind of get the pieces cut off so they're the right angle along with the fine adjustment with the bolts that are on the mount on the side you can also pivot the the base where the saw is attached to like you would a chop saw sitting on your bench so this was it took quite a bit to fine tune this and to get it to kind of where it is there are a few things that I want to change on this in the future and I definitely want to weld some supports underneath of the final section here so at this stage I'd already cut a few boards off I just kind of if you cut the log on an angle before you put it on the rig too that'll save you about three or four cuts uh when this thing is dialed in it really works well it had been so long since I used it you know I forgot to actually do some things and one of them is the chain that's on the back of the log right now later on I'll just use a short piece of chain and put a leg bolt in the very end of the log that way it's not kind of bumped up in an angle this here is a really not a good example to be cutting this piece on here because it's got some knot grow overs and it's kind of difficult to uh to work with so you know a lot of times when I'm using this and it's sitting on the rack then I'll take a few sacrificial pieces so that I know that I can get the lot to get the log to sit down in the rack properly and then just Advance it forward and you know when this thing is up and running and running good you could probably cut a couple hundred of these cutting boards a day so you know it it's um they've been quite popular at the show and I know that I've taken the fractal burning off my channel and there was just too much negativity directed towards it so I decided to take it off my channel but that's basically what I do with all these cutting boards that I make well not all of them but I would say probably eighty percent of them will end up getting frapped burnt and of course now uh they'll get some resin them too so were the saw amounts onto the rig itself there's four adjustment bolts well they're basically lock down bolts but you can actually turn unscrew them and screw ones in in order for the bar to line up properly with the stop along with that the that entire base will swing left and right as well with this being a 28 inch bar on it uh Husqvarna that was kind of the maximum length of bar that they recommended I would have liked to have got maybe a 32 inch bar to fit on this I think that it may have worked better because you would have been able to get longer boards but you know I I don't want you don't want to basically overpower the saw either even though this 365 has tons of power and if you're curious the six the 65 indicates the size of the motor so it's a 65 cc motor that's the way Husqvarna does it with um they're the way that they've got their their saws numbered this is basically the view that I see uh sometimes I will pull it up tight against the stop and then as the saw goes down through it of course it kind of pinches then I let it off and then that way you're able to cut down through it that there's a sacrificial piece so that the piece sits down in the uh the Cradle properly the goal for me here is to make sure that these boards are within the 16th with eighth of an inch in uniform thickness throughout it if if they are like that typically they'll drive without cracking if you have a board that's kind of thick on one end and thin on the other well they're going to dry at different rates so that's why it's important even when it comes to to uh turn in your bowls if you're twice turned Turner like I am that there you have a uniform wall thickness through the uh the piece and the same thing applies when you're cutting cutting boards as well oh all right so that is the first log I got 18 Cutting Boards out of that and I was hoping to get a little more but that log is pretty much the largest diameter that I can work with and it had little knot grow over so that was really kind of throwing things off so you know that's still a decent profit uh One log will yield you know 18 boards in at 100 to 150 each when they're finished that's not bad this is a time lapse that I set up I I thought that I would do this uh just for curiosity's sake now I took the little stop blocks out so the lower the ring I'm like why is this thing not going down and I looked over and like oh yeah I gotta take that off it's not going to go down with the um with the support sticking up the snatch block is attached to so once that was down I was able to flatten the rig and then like I said earlier ideally these logs would be right out in front of it and you just roll it onto the rig and it's no big deal it's a little bit of a hassle when they're sitting on the end like they were here but what I do is I put a snatch block on to where the mount is for the chainsaw and then you can pull it right onto the rig and then just you know manipulate the log like I am there and get it up onto the cradle and that's it once it gets up put the wooden supports back in and then take the pressure off of the winch install the metal piece where the snatch block will be attached to and then that goes on to the end of the log I think this is I was having issues with the uh the metal support kicking out from underneath of it and as you can see there's a fair bit of strain on it it's bending that's uh four inch uh c channel if you're curious what that is this piece here ended up I had to cut a bunch of this off and the reason for that is because there was a big long crack in it I didn't see it until I exposed I took a bunch of the bark off and I'm like oh that's no good you got to get rid of that if you leave any splits in these logs prior to cutting them into boards then you're going to have problems and this one here now that I've got the chain and the leg bolt in the end of this log it's actually working a lot better and this log itself is actually more designed for this type of rig because it has um it's it's more or less straight and it's flat without any knot Growers and that kind of business so if there's some people that are interested in maybe making something like this and have the skill to do so uh the size of this rig is 10 feet long and six and a half feet wide I didn't really see the need to make it any bigger than that especially the cost of Steel you can certainly put a longer log on the end of this that's not really that big of a deal at all the scissor uprights there are three by one and a half inch I believe it's eighth inch steel something like that and the C Channel or u-channel I'm not sure what it's called c channel review channel it's four inch by one and a half inch and it's quarter inch thick so it's pretty heavy duty stuff so there's there's a fair bit of mass uh you definitely don't want things moving around so that's definitely a good thing and and I've actually had this in place with logs way out in front of me and once them on with no problem at all and the rig never even thought about moving things that I would do differently the the upright where the winch is mounted I would make that at least another foot taller that way the winch line is basically on a downward angle as opposed to an upward angle like it is now where the snatch block is mounted that's what I'm referring to and I would also make some sort of um a latch that would go over top of the pulley where the back upright is so that the winch line will stay in place and not keep popping out that actually gets irritating after a while but you know literally this this thing has probably I don't know how many probably 3 000 cutting boards this thing is made so it's put a fair bit of money back in my pocket and like I said earlier you're able to use the whole tree and uh that that you know instead of you know the thing is people will say well you know it's firewood as well I'm not saving money yeah it is but I can make about 20 cutting boards and then buy firewood so it really doesn't make any sense to uh to look at it that way anyway it's it's a great thing and I'm glad that that we uh we made it and um anyway if you have any questions about it you can send me an email and I can try and give you some direction on it but it's uh it's been a really good thing so this is the next step this is Anchor seal you've heard me say it a number of times here on the channel to get rid of the acre seal before we do any casting well this is going to keep the wood from cracking uh essentially it is a liquid wax that dries clear because we're in a cold climate we use the glycol formula that way this doesn't freeze uh basically this is an old paint tray I dump it in there I have and this is all I do to keep it from hardening up is just put it in a bag a roller and it's still nice and pliable uh anyway I'll dump a bunch in here I'll put it on both sides of the board and then once I get these all done I'll show you the next step the reason why wood cracks when it's green and it's drying is because the moisture is being released too quickly by putting a product on here like anchor seal that's made by UC Coatings it will slow that release of moisture gradually and thus preventing the piece from cracking anchor seal does say that you'll have less loss if you apply two coats I've personally found that one coat is good I should also mention that I did take the time and knock the bark off these these are the ones from yesterday uh that took I don't know it was actually fairly quick maybe half hour or so I since these have been around for a year and a half uh there were bugs in the park but by root removing it you're not going to get any in your boards anyway you get the idea I'll bring it back when we're at the next step so here we are inside of my drying shed uh it's fairly cool in here compared to the outside environment the shed kind of sits in the shade a little bit and um there are 61 boards total here uh so that's pretty good yield out of the logs I they were fighting me the rig was fighting me a little bit I think that I probably got to get closer to 70. uh but regardless they'll sit here for six months and then I'll start rotating them through my fridge Kiln and they will be ready to be finished when I want lager charcuterie boards this is the way that I do it I probably shouldn't get out my bigger saw that's got a 42 inch bar on it it would have been a lot easier to do these but I didn't see I didn't have a lot of them to do so I figured it was okay to do it this way I don't know how many times I knocked my camera over this week it was terrible actually uh anyway I'm not the best at cutting these by hand but that certainly is an option for those who don't want to spend a lot of money especially now after the pandemic still is very expensive anyway this is another way around it all right so this is our first crotch piece and woodturners really like these crotch pieces because you know there's generally there's a lot of nice figure inside of here and the way that I'm going to cut this here's the pith the very center of the tree I try and line up the upper one with the lower one and if this was a really wide crotch piece I'd maybe cut a strip out of here like so uh getting rid of that pith area totally but when it's a small piece like this I generally just cut it down through the center and then you know like I get rid of the pith area when it's mounted on the lathe so for the new woodturners you may be wondering well why do I need to get rid of that and the problem with leaving that pith in your work is that typically if Wood's going to crack it's going to crack through the pith area and there's some beautiful crotch green and that's why woodturners really like these crotch pieces if you can remove it it is certainly best to do so uh it's always not an option like in this case like I said earlier these aren't really wide pieces so it's pretty hard to do that but you can get some pretty phenomenal looking green all right so next up is this Walnut Burl as you can see it's still on the trunk of the tree uh ideally this is the way I like to get them problem is this isn't even would have liked to seen this more out here than we would have been able to do a lot more with this piece so I'm not exactly sure what we are going to be able to do with this um yeah it's too bad way way needs to be like this to be even but anyway what we're going to do is free this from the trunk I will cut it probably about here straight down and then once we get that cut off we'll be able to see what we can solve each other the trunk of the tree as well [Music] anyway I'm hoping you can pick that up uh we got an ant's nest not a real surprise to be honest with you uh yeah so early indications on this Burl are that it's uh it's definitely going to need resin that is for sure might get more solid as we move move into the piece but all right uh I have to stick this aside for now and uh encourage these ants to uh leave the premises all right so this is that Big Walnut piece uh there's some decent cracks going across here so I'm going to cut this on this side of the pith and uh I'll probably take about an inch out of the center on this piece as the ants are still vacating the premises and uh I don't know we'll have to see we'll have to see what good it is I'm gonna cut this off here that way I've got a 20 inch Burr on my chainsaw so I don't like to go over that I don't like to have the tip of the Chainsaw buried into the wood yeah I don't know once we cut this open we'll see if it's salvageable or not and I know that the lighting is probably not the best for you guys but foreign this might be a lost cause but we'll have to see so I'm not going to harp on safety too much here uh if you have chainsaw pants or here I'm wearing chops uh you should definitely wear them I wasn't too concerned about when the chainsaw was mounted in the log rig there's not really much that can happen there but anytime you're holding the chainsaw and cutting like I am here uh typically accents with a chainsaw in regards to cuts to your legs hopping during lemming and operations such as this so if you got them you should wear them and if you don't have them you should get them well that's a good sign we'll be able to salvage piece on this side anyway that's good I had to alter my cut because it wasn't lining up at all on the back side now this isn't a this isn't a waste of peace you've still got you can get a cutting board out of each side of the pith here so that's what I usually do if you cut this say two inches two and a half inches thick then you've got a bunch of pepper mill blanks if that's what you want definitely want to get rid of these ants before I remove any of these pieces into my workshop though it's probably going to stay out here for a while and I don't know if it's even sellageable or not we'll have to see might look uh cool with resin stick aside I've also got this piece of wood on the ground that way your saw doesn't go into the dirt you definitely don't want that to happen all right so now that this is off of the actual trunk of the tree get a better look at it I am going to trim this down a little more especially now that I know that there's probably ants in it so trim that down there probably leave this the same as it is there sometimes it's best to cut them off thick and then have a look at them really bummed out this Burl isn't more even because this would have made a really really cool nested set so anyway we'll have to figure out what we're gonna do with that [Music] [Music] well we definitely found out where the nest is what a shame I was so looking forward to this being a really cool burl and it still maybe but only with resin now all right this is um this is maple and it looks to be a really decent sized burrow from this side until you flip it around and this here is just rotten just falling apart so ah this might be one of these pieces where you slice off pieces of it and then save them for casting at a later date because really uh there's not much that can be done with this I think that's what I will do I think I will just slice I'm going to trim this first on both ends and cut these two Wings off and then flip around and cut off this piece here which I don't know it might be solid probably got a lot of spalting in it too hmm all right anyway let's cut these uh these off here and then we'll figure out what we're going to do with the rest of this it's a tough one though [Music] I'll check that out pencil line spalting hmm might have to hold on to these pieces and stabilize them I still got lots of cactus juice so she's a gnarly piece but look at that spalting pencil lines bolting different colors of small thing very cool here's the other one not real thick though very nice all right so I've been looking at this and I think what I'm going to do is cut this right down the center yeah there's a big void down in there but I think that if we get one really large Burl on the back side of this that's going to be great and then any of these pieces that are on the wings here this one you know I don't know if there's anything salvageable on that side or not but might be able to throw them in the casting bucket as well I suspect that down inside of this piece there's going to be lots of spalting like this so we really don't want to lose this but uh great big void under there I don't know I'm definitely gonna have to cut it on an angle to get anything out of it really or come out quite a bit rate a boat there or so [Music] what do you think of that yeah it's really punky I think it's savable but that bolting is some pretty amazing looking stuff same thing on this side those Barrel pieces over there will be able to save those don't know if we're going to be able to save any of this even though when this is dry when it's casted with resin it looks pretty Sharp we'll have to see all right I think we should try this uh do this Catalpa Barrel next as you can see everything that I cut I like the place on top of something some waste blocks that way when you cut down through it the chain doesn't go into the dirt because sharpening the chainsaw really sucks and it takes away from production and you'll also probably might have noticed that I'll set it up on a block that's got a v-groove cut in it to hold the piece as well a lot of people may not be familiar with this this is Catalpa northern northern Catalpa I've never seen a Catalpa Burl so that's something new uh but if you look at the kind of the color of the wood it almost looks metallic that's the one thing I like about it really light um unfortunately this piece here that's pretty much just firewood uh and this piece the Burl itself well that's probably going to need some resin to make anything with it but in the end it should be cool all right pretty soon we're going to be into these big crotch pieces I might try and hand cut some of these long pieces uh into long cutting boards too small to do bowls with uh this unfortunately has got some splits in it so I don't know we'll have to see how that goes but I mean it's a double crotch should be some really nice figure and there should be a big bowl blank in the bottom of this too uh you actually let's cut this up next this is um Locust I haven't really done much with Locust at all here's another big uh crotch area down in there one there too all right let's cut that up and then I think we'll call it a day for today so this piece is the same as the other pieces I I like to preferably when I'm processing processing this stuff cut it back to Good Wood where there's no cracks and then from there like I said earlier I've got a 20 inch bar on the saw so you know ideally you're going to be cutting anything no longer than 19 inches long and then that way the tip of the saw isn't buried into the wood because that's another area you can get a kickback so that's why I like to process blanks the way that I do and along with that cutting it down through that pith is is probably the main thing that you're going for those pieces will be casting pieces all right it is the next day and before we process this Maple I figure since the bucket is full on the tractor we also go in and round these and I'll briefly talk about my rounding jig that I made uh the ants are gone out of the walnuts I suspect they're probably now my firewood pile so I'll have to put some ant beats to make sure that we get rid of them all when we cut these open we might see them again but we'll have to see but I just find it's easier to the the buckets full so why not go and round the stuff on the bandsaw now and get it ready for the lathe foreign [Music] I did shoot a video on this the making of this uh but essentially you put a hole in the bottom of the blank and then you adjust this in and out until you get to the size that you want I will show this as we go but if you want to make something similar to this there is a video on my channel and if I think about it I will link it in the description down below so the easiest that I find to do this is to use these round templates like I've got this is 16 inches in diameter and it fits on here pretty close and you know I just Center it on the blank have a look underneath to make sure that there's not going to be any issues that way find the center mark drill the corresponding hole this actually just slides off of the circle jig you can fit this into there and then that way put this upside down on the rig and that's it the shootouts will mention that I've got this roller that I just sat on the floor here out feed roller if you will and then that way you can move the table in and out and the roller supports it and then the table when you put heavy weight on it doesn't tilt out I never noticed it but if you look at that previous clip you'll see the roller isn't sitting flat on the bottom side of the table and that's because I've got the table tilted on the bandsaw so that the pieces I cut match the bucket there are the buckets that I use I eventually correct that at the end or later on but I was like why it's just something seemed off about it and it's not really that big of a deal as long as you want it the top surface that you're looking at to be the top and not the bottom but if it's vice versa then you're gonna have um you know it's going to be some issues so anyway watch out for that if you tilt your tables to match your casting buckets and while I was at it I figured I would go ahead and process the center piece that I cut it up walnut getting rid of that pith area and cutting off the bark area I can guarantee you that there is going to be some sort of Critter in the bark so it's best to get rid of that so that you don't put that in your drying shed and then have it um go into your other pieces of wood because you definitely don't want to do that all right so we got our first kind of dilemma as to what to do here this is some beautiful crotch figure this is Walnut uh problem is if you go for the figure that's right here well it's going to be a really shallow bowl you do have another knot coming out of it so that's an issue um in this case I'm probably going to just Center this piece so I could probably go larger than that in this case I think that I'm just going to go for the largest blank that I can get because you know if you go the other way you're going to have a really shallow bowl and you know that's fine but a lot of times I'm cutting for the size of the bowl so I mean this would be interesting it'll have certainly some crotch Grain on one side of it if this was an even crotch where the two halves of it were the same size then it's not such a big deal but in this case and the other thing too is staying away from these cracks that are coming in here too so that's another thing that you need to think about when you're cutting these crotch pieces the other thing that I like to do uh and this is preferably to get done before use the band saw because there's a lot of dirt in the bark so that dirt when you go to mount this piece on the lathe is going to dull your tools and it's also going to dull your bandsaw blade uh in this case it's actually on there pretty good but I think I'm going to be able to get them majority of it off anyway of course the only exception to that route is if you're going to do a natural Edge Bowl but these have sat around too long and there's no way that the bark will actually stay on so best to remove it now all right so here is our progress so far these will just get anchor seal on them and then they'll go into my drying shed these are going to be going on to the lathe Ah that's that Maple two pieces down there I'll just probably put some micro seal on those and put them in the Kiln as they are this is some more of that Locus and this is actually if you look at this piece if you look at this piece if you split it in half and then invert the pieces and then put resin down the center of it there's another project this I could probably put on lathe but I think I'm going to leave it as it is this is that Locus again whether it in beaten up as it is that's the Catalpa burl can't really do much with that it's going to have to be dried as it is and of course this big old Walnut piece that's going to have to be dried as it is as well uh I failed to mention that along with you know I don't have a park brake for this tractor so I can't lift the bucket in the summertime in the wintertime I've got a big blower unit on the back and I can put that down and it's going to stay where I want it to it's probably not going to go anywhere but I don't know this stuff isn't real heavy except for that um that Walnut Burl it's not exactly light but anyway I'm going to just carry on processing this I should also mention that the off cuts are being pushed into the wheelbarrow and then that will go into my drying area I burn wood in the workshop here for heat and of course all of the bark and other compost material goes into the green bin everything gets used all right I'll finish these up and I'll probably bring it back for that burrow when I do that but other than that uh we're getting there we thought our ant issue was gone but I was wrong uh inside the burrow started digging around and there's this huge dirt pocket or whatever that used to be and I tipped it over and knocked it on the floor and they just came flying out of there so that way I've sprayed some ant be gone down on the floor here so hopefully that will get rid of them you definitely don't want the ants migrating to other pieces of your of wood especially something like this that you plan on drying in the drying shed all of these so you know uh killing these Critters before you actually put your wood in the drying shed is definitely what you want to do let's flip this over [Applause] yep Miller tree Wreckers I think I'll just scoop this up with the shovel and Chuck it in the woods that's it for this load uh this is that large Maple Burl and it was so rotten up underneath it when I put it on the pin it just moved around so I cut a bunch of pieces up out of it uh it's kind of funny because in the past this would have been complete junk food to me but when this dries now I'll be able to put this back together throw some resin in and this will make a very unique piece along with a lot of these other pieces a lot of figurative grain in this along with the spalting so it's going to be really cool to see what we make with these in the future uh so there's that that this is actually probably both sides of that Burl if you remember and of course those two pieces down there that we cut the ends off of all right I'll do a little bit of cleanup here and then we'll get at that maple [Music] all right so this is the butter knot I actually forgot about this and these two pieces were together so that one was on Top This one this was the butt end of the tree um as you can see it's already starting to really crack quite bad so I'll cut this back an inch or so just to get some fresh wood maybe two inches unfortunately on the other end it's actually split quite bad too um I'll probably cut this back a couple of inches to Good Wood and then I'll have to see what we're gonna get if I get a really large bowl blank out of here the same thing on that side and then hopefully a couple of smaller ones on this upper end then that's really all you can do with this so you hear me see that term cutting back the Good Wood uh the reason for that is if you process your blanks with cracks already in them then there's a good chance that that crack will migrate and then you're during the drying process you're going to lose that that bowl or whatever it is so if you've got the room to cut back to clean wood that doesn't have any cracks in it it's best to do that this piece here actually the piece that's on the left side of this that I cut off actually had an ant's nest in it as well a tiny tiny little ants and I didn't see them at the time when I was processing all this and the next day when I went out to the workshop and I was going to round the pieces on the bandsaw and I picked it up and they were I don't know probably about 60 tiny little ants and between the two pieces I'm like well okay I guess that's going to the burn pile as well it had some dry rot in it too well I was hoping for a better yield than that from this Butternut but you know this is really all we're gonna get I think and even the stuff that we did get is not really all that great shape split right there uh you can see some down on that one as well I've got more over it over there but it's you know it's it's not going to be any better it's going to be all the same and uh these two pieces all you're going to really be able to do is get um maybe some Peppermill blanks out of them disappointing I thought that we'd be able to get more yield out of it but the uh the other part of the tree there was a big dead section in it right here so this is just really Punky right here so that is also in other parts of the tree so I don't know really it's probably only good for firewood and it's not even good firewood all right let's move on to the maple finally [Music] [Music] all right so this is the base off of that large crotch that you just cut and you know this poses a lot of issues this is where the crotch actually started back here so we're gonna have to cut an inch out of this and we'll still have a decent Bowl blank on each side of it on this side on the other side there's a branch coming down here this isn't the crotch but there's a crack that runs like this here and here so by taking an inch out of here we'll take out a lot of that crack but we've still got a little bit to deal with but that's what the thin CA glue is for so when I'm cutting bowl blanks and I know that they're not going to be natural Edge you'll see me after this bullet falls off I might put it back up I'll cut on where the bottom side of the bowl is going to be that way there's a flat spot there already before it goes on to the lathe and they stack nicer too now after I Lop off this little Branch area here I didn't see the need to cut an inch out of the center of this it actually was pretty solid uh the other thing when you're cutting crotches is typically the piece that's on the chainsaw side right now is going to be fatter than it is up at the top of the crotch section so you'll see me cut off a little bit there and same thing on the other side that way it's even well it's not the best crotch grain I've ever seen but you know I think that it's going to make a pretty nice Bowl here's that one we'll get the other one [Music] this stuff is actually really light uh yeah again double crotch very nice grain maybe should have cut it off a little further down here to get some some better figure you never really know how deep these crotches are [Music] this is that last crotch piece uh I thought I would show you this because this obviously came from the crown of the tree because it's got branches coming out from it everywhere so you may ask yourself you know how do you cut this and the way that I always do it is if I have multiple branches coming out of a blank I will always cut the two largest sections like like you see here that that may be obvious but some people may not fully understand that well yeah there's like one two three four five that I can see Hertz [Music] [Music] foreign there's the last two that's about it for me today the bugs are bad what is that bird does anybody know what that bird is that one I can never see what it is that way we'll see you tomorrow so it's the next day and I totally forgot that we were going to do this uh Pine Burl or this Spruce Barrel uh you might hear some shooting in the background here the military base is about three kilometers as a crow flies that way and there's range so that's what you're going to be hearing probably they've been shooting all morning uh this Burl doesn't go all the way around if it did burls like this make great hollow forms much of this would be an absolutely massive one if that was the case so you know it's missing underneath here and I'm basically looking for a full burl which I believe is going to be something like this when we cut this and again you know I already shot a video on the pine barrels worth it well let's open this one up and see how much pitch is in it I'm not too optimistic though [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] well surprisingly enough this uh this is about the hardest wood that we've uh actually cut up here in the last few days doesn't look to have a ton of figure in it I don't see a lot of pitch matter of fact I see very little so you know maybe we'll maybe we will give this a shot bro it is pretty much perfectly shaped as a burl cap that you want it's a little big here but it's um it's certainly the nicest Burl that we've caught so far well I don't know maybe not but uh anyway there's that one here's the other one you can tell there's some figure in there it's fairly even as well and there's the last one I spoke too soon see that it's enough of a pitch pocket anyway we will uh we'll round them and then we'll make a decision from there [Music] I know that we haven't talked much about bandsaw blades I actually just got my order yesterday from r d bandsaws and what I like to get it's called a wood turner blade and half inch three teeth per inch and it has a very wide kerf so that way when you're cutting wet material it just eats it up like crazy and I pretty much use these blades to cut resin everything that that everything you see on this channel has been cut with these blades I usually get them five at a time um if you're in the area the Hamilton Woodworking Show I guess they're going to be there hey and if you do tell them I sent you I could always use another sponsor for my channel so let him know that I sent you and tell them that I'm plugging them here a free plug on YouTube for them along with that I got some zero clearance table inserts uh the one that was on there was like really bad if you want to see this in here oh it's just some more catalog stuff anyway there's five blades there and if you're curious for these five blades my bandsaw takes 131 and a half inches and for these five blades it was 189.05 with taxes and shipping included Rd bandsaw blades there's Link in this in the description check them out a reason why you shouldn't let your wood basically sit around any longer than a year before processing it is these little critters here I just took the bark this is a maple crotch and I just took the bark off of it and uh they were underneath of it there's more down there as well so you know after a year they're going to start pouring into the wood and then it's going to basically make your wood useless so I don't know what these are I don't know if they're longhorn beetle they're they're wood boring Beetle of some sort larvae of course but anyway if you uh leave your stuff laying around this is what you expect to find in it or worse I haven't mentioned it during this video but it's always best to lower your guides like I did there uh you'll get less wander with your blade in your bandsaw a lot of times I'm leaving it up so that uh the camera has a better view of what I'm cutting it's always best to keep it as low as you can to the wood you'll get a better cut all right so there's 23 blanks uh we'll be able to core some of them uh this plastic that you see this is six mil poly and that will drop down over the face of these I don't totally seal it off but that will slow down the release of moisture and keep them from cracking until we can get them on the lathe and uh turned into bowls I didn't show it but uh this is another Maple crotch it actually might be one of the nicest one that we did in this video and on the other side of my trailer there was actually some pieces of Walnut so that's what this is so you know all total we might get maybe 50 bowls and tons of casting pieces which is really the main thing that I'm going for now to be quite honest with you that's a cherry Burl in the back there it's uh we didn't have that in this video it's been sitting around here for a while but um lots of stuff I did hand cut some of these uh Maple boards so they're actually a lot larger than longer than the other ones so the other pieces of maple that wrote there that's what I'm going to do as much as I can I can probably get maybe another six or so out of there and then that's it next week we'll be moving on and actually finish turning these on the lathe all right well that's it for the video how it was great to be outside for a change instead of being locked up inside of the shop uh this is the down and dirty aspect of wood turning a lot of people have no concept of what it takes to get to you know have this pretty Bowl sitting on your table well a lot of work goes into it prior to that and and a lot of times I think that a lot of people wouldn't especially at a show they'll pick up a bowl and go this is 300 bucks yeah it's 300 bucks it's it's a ton of work to get it to that stage to you holding it so you know part of my channel is that is to educate people on the aspects of woodturning and why things cost the way they do uh I really enjoy working outside and processing wood my body doesn't anymore but um certainly my back and my hips don't like it anymore but I really enjoy there's nothing like cutting open the log and seeing what's inside of it that beautiful green most times you know you're just kind of like yeah it's all right but a lot of times you'll up it's fantastic wow I was really hoping that that Walnut Burl was going to come through and then yeah it's just absolutely destroyed that it will still be a nice looking piece with resin but that wasn't really my intention with that piece I wanted to make it nested set with it but that's just not going to happen maybe later on with the resin we could do and that's the set with it all right don't forget to put designer epoxy down in the comments and uh that's for the three gallon giveaway uh three gallon giveaway at a hundred thousand subscribers and of course by leaving a comment down below you'll also be entered into my bowl draw at every five thousand so the next one's at 95 000 and we're we're creeping up there next week we're going to be finishing these while getting we're going to be roughing these out into rough goat bowls that's the that's the primary goal and get things ready for the drying shed and for the two fridge guilds all right well that's it take care stay safe don't forget the Bell please share my videos with your friends and of course that thumbs up will always help with the Analytics we'll see you next week [Music] foreign foreign [Music]

Channel: Sprague Woodturning

Views: 40,120

Keywords: logs, wood turning, woodturning, cutting boards, petawawa, ontario, ottawa, ottawa valley, bowl blanks, butternut, maple, walnut, roughing out

Id: _xmaNzRwzT0

Length: 67min 34sec (4054 seconds)

Published: Fri May 26 2023