Like many others I found myself with an unaccustomed amount of free time this past spring that I used to complete a few pandemic projects. For me having more time to myself meant more time for the workshop and I was able to complete several projects that had been on the back burner for longer than I care to admit. Several of these included burls or pieces of burls that I had long meant to do something with but never quite got around to.
The first of my pandemic projects was to do something with a large piece of yellow cedar burl. It had been under my workbench for few years. It was stalled due to always having other things to work on and a bit of reluctance to work with yellow cedar. It turned out to make a rather spectacular bowl though.
The next pandemic projects were a few small burls that had been given to me a few years earlier by a friend of a friend. First were two bowls that came from one burl. I had roughed it out years earlier but had difficulty coring out the center of the larger bowl and wound up breaking off the tenon I was using to hold it on the lathe. I put it back and reshaped it to make a new tenon. I was then able to finish coring the center and made a smaller bowl from the core.
The smaller bowl made from the core of the previous bowl. I made this one quite thin to give a delicate and light appearance.
A couple of the other burls appeared to actually be from overgrown broken off branches rather than true burls. Still they looked interesting so I decided to see what I could do with them. One fell apart while I was working on it but the other turned out be a kind of interesting piece with natural edges and a few holes. I never did figure out what kind of wood it is.
The final pandemic project in this group is a platter from a piece of maple root burl. I had cut the burl into slabs some time ago a made a platter from the largest one but the smaller pieces had gotten forgotten. This one made for a nice medium sized platter with lots of character. As far as I know this one is still available at Pacific Arts Market in Vancouver.
I did complete more pandemic projects during my COVID time but this is it for the burl pieces. I am pretty sure I have more forgotten pieces kicking around so when time allows there will be more to complete.