Drying Burl Maple

[keithvance62]

Just wondering if anyone has any experence drying burl maple. It seems to me that it would be more likley to check than regular maple. Thinking about cutting it into blanks while its still green, instead of boards.  Keith Vance

[Birddog6]

If you think it is going to be really nice, you need to buy some REAL log sealer & seal the stuff right. Yes it cost bout $50 for a 5 gal can of it & it will do LOTS of logs, but it is worth it. You ruin one good blank cause of a check & you just shot the cost of the sealer.  And if it is stump cut or has a burl or knot, it will definitely check or crack.........
I cut a whole truckload of 3" walnut planks, sealed the ends, got sick & forgot to go back & seal all the knots & burls. Big mistake & costly one as well.

Do it right, get the log sealer. I don't remember the place but you can call Wayne Dunlap & he can tell ya, as he told me.  Put it on several times & insure you covered it well.  Now it is not Fullproof, and you still may get some cracks on ends & etc, but it will save you some wood, as that is what the pro's use.

[northmn]

Allow for some cut offor shallow minor checking.  You do have to seal the ends, some use paint, the Real is probably the best, some use shellacs, there is a wood hardening product I bought that has a wax base that would be good.  The intial drying should be a little slower.  Best to keep them out of the sun period and in a shed with adequate air circulation.  Outdoor drying will only do so much.  Drying wood is very dependent on the region you live in.  The old saw about 1 year per inch holds in some sections of the country, but will vary and is mostly BS.  In humid areas you should have a hotbox to finish them off.  In Arizona you may get quicker results.   Depending on your time frame homemade kilns can be made that work very well. 

DP

[keweenaw]

One thing you'll have to be really careful about is keeping the pieces from twisting.  It will take pretty good support and a lot of weight to keep them from twisting as they dry as there is a lot of internal stress in a burl.  I think you might have more problems in this regard trying to dry them as blanks than as planks.  An other advantage of drying as planks is that if some flaw does open up you may be able to work around it when you cut a blank from a plank, but not the other way around.

Tom

[Acer Saccharum]

The larger you leave the pieces, the more loss you will have due to checking. I made the mistake of drying my stock wood as planks for two years. I had a lot of checking, even tho' I'd sealed and dried the wood carefully. Now I will cut out rough blanks while it's still wet. Seal 'em up and sticker the blanks and weigh them down.

Tom

[T*O*F]

Sink the log to the bottom of the pond for a couple of years.  It will dry and stabilize, but not rot due to the absence of oxygen.

Wood is dried to remove the moisture that is locked up in the cellular structure of the wood.  As that moisture leaves, the cells collapse which gives the shrinking, checking, and warping.  Wood dried under water does not do this.  The cellular moisture still leaves the log, even though the wood is "wet."  However, "wet" wood is the result of water that enters via the xylem and phloem, which are the capillaries that carry nutrients back and forth from the roots and leaves.  When drying "wet" wood, it is then stored in a cool area free from direct sunlight.

There is a reason why old sunken logs are so valuable.  The first is if they are old growth logs and the second is the way they dry and stabilize under water.  A 19th century reference states that the best walnut for gunstocks is found by searching for submerged river snags.  The trees grow along the bank until erosion causes them to fall into the river.  The whole root ball, where the best wood is found, is preserved and can be harvested.

[northmn]

When you seal the ends make sure you also paint about 2-4 inches up the edges also.  There was a small misunderstanding on this with one person.

DP

[The other DWS]

if air drying you have to stack and "sticker" with spacers strips and then really weight the heck out of the stack. 
My buddy's father in law harvested and rough sawed a bunch of walnut/maple /cherry that were blown down in a tornado in the mid or early 1960's  a few years back he passed away and I helped Dave move the stored wood to his house where he was going to mill it for trim. 
The stack was a good 12 feet long and 10 wide and maybe 8 high under a shed roof. ends were well sealed of course.   The planks on the edges of the stack showed some weathering of course but what I really noticed was the warping of the upper third or so of the stack.  the lower 2/3 had enough weight from the wood on top of them to hold their form.  I was hoping to find some thick gunstock wood in there but it was all rough sawed to 1". 
the good burled stuff he'd put at the bottom so it was OK.  but even then when Dave tried fancy routing and milling some for crown molding there was loss as the boards lost their stabilization and released their internal stresses when wood was trimmed away.

[Birddog6]

When I dry my lumber I go buy a bunch of firing strips, cut to length & put a stick on each end & then on every foot, and next layer Exactly over same sticks so weight is dispersed on the sticks. Get to the top & put a  8 x 4 x16" concrete cap block on the top plank over every stick to hold it all down.

[westerner]

I use Anchor Seal on all my wood.  http://www.uccoatings.com/Home/Products/ANCHORSEAL 

I wouldnt know how to use it on a Maple burl as the grain flows in all directions.  Super curly wood can crack check or open up just about anywhere.


          Joe.

[The other DWS]

Stump wood is highly stressed as a trees weight and size increase with growth and decrease with loss of major limbs.  In addition it is affected by the surrounding environment and topography.  Cutting slabs and planks opens a veritable Pandoras box when the bulk which binds those stresses is removed.
 True burl wood is a distorted area---I think of it as some sort of benign tumor or nondestructive cancer which causes a local abnormal growth which further distorts the fibres and amplifies those stresses.   I know of local wood turners who have had prized well-seasoned burl-wood fragment in a slow motion explosion as the bulk is removed to turn a bowl.

the high failure rate in the drying and seasoning process is one of the reasons this stuff is so highly priced

[westerner]

I was thinking burl as in the tumor growth type. Most of them are air dried bark on. 

  Joe.

[keithvance62]

Thank youall for your thoughts. The burl is the tumor type about 3 feet in diameter, it sits at ground level. The tree looks like a giant onion.   Keith

[westerner]

Most of the Maple burls we have here are at the bottom of the tree just above the roots. Usually they're rotten in the middle or hollow.  It's Western Big Leaf Maple.  It's very wet here and is typical PNW rain forest.

A fellow in Poulsbo had a Cedar burl in his front yard about the size of a Volkswagon. It looked like a mushroom also.

       Joe.