Bowls: Maple Burl

One of my woodturning club buddies gave me a large piece of maple (about 16"x16" and weighing in at 50 lbs + after a meeting. I was really looking forward to makeing several larger (and deep) maple bowls and after cutting the log in half, turned one bowl blank and set it aside to season.

I began work on the other half of the log but soon discovered a buried nail with my trusty chainsaw. Not deterred, I re-sharpened said chainsaw chain and went back to rough shaping my 2nd bowl blank. That was when I discovered the 2nd nail.

This process continued until I'd finally run out of patience, sharpenable chainsaw chains, light, and most alarmingly, wood as my 25 lb half log was now about 5 lbs and looking rather moth eaten from my efforts to remove all nails from the wood.

Out of the tiny bit of maple left, I was surprised and relieved to find I'd been left with a small burl section I'd not known was there. This 4" bowl and the maple burl box on the boxes page are all that was salvageable after removing what ended up being 21 nails from a 8"x 16" piece of log. (sigh...)