I should start taking classes now so that I’ll be ready to pivot to woodworking when AI replaces engineers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burl
Woodworking with these.
In a previous life I did genetic engineering with agrobacterium-mediated transfection. Agro causes galls. Good blast from the past.
I used to avoid burl when I would make wood rings [1]. It's just very hard to predict how it'll behave if you try to steam bend it.
Eric Sloane would have loved this, it's a true reverence for wood.
My wife wanted a wooden engagement ring, and so I fashioned one (well ~10) out of a Pacific madrone burl.
Great material to work with, but wouldn’t recommend wooden bands unless your actual wedding is near!
(Plus, quite a few broke while I was iterating on my technique…)
To be clear, this is one of the reasons my then-girlfriend wanted one, to ensure a speedy engagement!
I more common method for wooden rings is to cut a long thin rip at 1/16th”. Soak it water for 30 minutes. Wrap it around something finger size, put a rubber band around it and let it dry. You can get a good imitation of a glossy epoxy finish with CA/super glue. This gives a lot more strength than a cutout.
https://medium.com/@luajit.io/burl-a-simple-but-flexible-htt...
He told me to do it for extra money, so one summer I went off on my own to start cutting them.
And that's the story of how I learned that sometimes burls form when a tree grows around a fence post. Alternate title: Stihl chainsaws can't cut steel fencing.
Most of them are old fence lines where someone decided attaching barbed wife directly to gum and hickory trees was a good idea.
Veneer gets a bad rap but it’s a great way to make highly-figured wood available to as many people as possible. And since burl and spalted woods are often unstable or have big pits or cracks, it’s a good way to avoid structural problems.
