New Douglas Fir Burl - Wooden Accent Pot

[ghues]

Hi Folks,
I thought I'd share with you a wooden accent pot that I recently finished. I carved it out of a small Douglas fir burl (I call it the "double headed turtle").
To show its potential I just added a small accent pot filled with a local sedum.
I'm lucky in that I come across many such burls with my work ....I'm going to start making more of these....will post onto this thread.
Comments as always welcome.
Cheers
Graham

 

[Dan W.]

Beautiful! This is a great idea.

 

[tmmason10]

Very cool, thanks for sharing.

 

[JudyB]

It is beautiful, but there's a little downside to these pretty things...

I'm sure that you are getting these from an approved place, but just so everyone out there knows, trimming burls from public redwoods in CA is a criminal offense. Apparently there is such a market out there, that many trees are being damaged from their poaching. It does not kill the tree, but can shorten it's life to have the burl cut off. I don't think the problem is just in CA, I think it occurs across the country.

 

[ghues]

It is beautiful, but there's a little downside to these pretty things...

I'm sure that you are getting these from an approved place, but just so everyone out there knows, trimming burls from public redwoods in CA is a criminal offense. Apparently there is such a market out there, that many trees are being damaged from their poaching. It does not kill the tree, but can shorten it's life to have the burl cut off. I don't think the problem is just in CA, I think it occurs across the country.

Hi Judy,
Just to clear my name and to shed some light on it lol.......
I work in the forest industry as a professional forester and ALL of my burls have come from logging/harvesting waste material left on a cut over site. This waste is scaled and the company pays a bill to the "provincial coppers" at the cut over areas stumpage rate (a rate charged by the province to companies for the right to harvest the timber within the cut over area – which is based on current market prices for each species).

Many of the native species that grow here; western red cedar, Alaskan Yellow Cedar, Douglas Fir, Sitka Spruce, Big leaf Maple grow burls and they can be abundant on harvesting waste material.

I picked this little one up after a yamadori collecting trip ( I have a permit for collecting) - we had parked at the end of a logging road and it was lying on the ground, grey and well weathered.....I actually almost tripped on it …I kicked it out of my path as I loaded a collected mountain hemlock into the back of the truck. It rolled over and looked just like a big rotten knot on a short branch. After getting the tree in the truck I looked at the piece and noted that it was very rotten and much of the outer shell fell away exposing the hardened burl.

 

[JudyB]

Hey Graham,
I didn't mean to incriminate you...
I sort of understood that you have access to stuff like this, but just wanted to put the info out there, since it seems to be a problem in some places.

waste knot, want knot