Burl...Anyone

[Splinter]

Is this a good way to use Burl?





I saw these at a Roadhouse along the Denali Highway in Alaska last week.

[JackLeg]

Now that's cool! Don't know how I missed that! We were in Alaska for 15 days in August, two nights and days in Denali. (My heart is still there as you can see by my avatar.) Nice pic. Thanx.

[skeeter]

I think the proper question is . . . . How much room did you have in your suitcase!

(Like me trying to pack Koa in Hawaii.)

[Splinter]

Originally Posted by skeeter

I think the proper question is . . . . How much room did you have in your suitcase!

(Like me trying to pack Koa in Hawaii.)

I didn't get any of the burl....but I did get a piece of Alder at the Salmon Bake we went to in Juneau. They use Alder wood to cook the salmon over an open fire.

[mkepke]

The wood is most likely spruce or pine, so not sure how useful it'd be for a woodworker - admittedly I've never cut into a pine burl.

Splinter..try smoking salmon over cherry, if you haven't already. Cherry has a nice delicate favor that goes well with the fish.

Curiously, alder is sometimes used as a cheaper substitute for cherry in furniture-making. Go figure.

-Mark

I think that may be target practice burl, least that what I call it. It's not uncommon to bugger up a tree with a shot gun so bad that it burls over something like that. Only problem is you wind up with tiny lead balls in the burl and it makes the surrounding wood turn blue. I could be all wrong too, it might be a natural burl but it seems odd to have so many burls on one log occurring naturally, usually it's one maybe two and rarely three on the same log...

Thanks

[thrytis]

My wife snapped a picture of this tree beside the road in NY. If it is from a shot gun, someone spent a lot of time on target practice right next to the road!

That my friend I do believe is called bark scale. It's caused by many differnt kinds of insects but mainly by one type of insect callled the giant coccid. They enter a damaged area of the tree (see left branch on your picture). As the insect population becomes established at the base of weak or dying branch(s) the branch collar is killed, the branch is shed and a sunken area remains. The insect poplualtion proceeds to spread other parts of the trees, the tree walls off injured areas caused by the wood muching insects, the walling creating a typical bark scale as showin in your picture. Eventually the tree will be over taken, dye and become a smogasborg for other insects and fungus, eventually falling to the ground to be finished off in the circle of life. My guess is that tree is in advaced stages of infestation and unfit for lumber. You might could take a 3 or 5 lb hammer to see if the trunk is still solid, I doubt it is.

I could be wrong here, but I have seem a tree very simlar to the one you pictured after it was cut off the stump and I could get a good look at it, it was trash because it had eaten up by insects and was rotted.

Thanks