burls

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elody21

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My son asked the question yesterday. Can burls be grown somehow by people on a tree? People are growing gems and cultivating pearls. I am sure it would take a long time but I wonder if it is possible? Just a question. Alice
 
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The question my son had was IF it could be done not if someone would want to. Alice
 
While there are any number of thoughts as to how and why burls occur, as far as I have ever read, there is no definitive answer. Without an answer as to what causes them, I doubt you could artificially create one.
 
There is no way to duplicate that process of nature. The Italians are making manufactured veneer that looks similar to burl veneer and that is about as close as they come right now.Here's a link to a pic of the imitation veneer. They take sheets of veneer, run it through die rollers with texture, then sand off the bumps left from the press. Or something like that.

http://www.constantines.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1986
 
DCBluesman is right as far as I I have read,and I did a fair amount of reading on the subject several years ago.They know that on occasion burls are caused by a few different reasons,but nothing is consistent.I do know that its a growth of many new buds,that seem to fail to become a branch.They just keep building up on top of one another,this is why a maple is much more likely to burl then an oak(adventitious buds).If you cut a maple tree at its base it will most the time send out shoots from the stump,but do that to a oak and most the time nothing.Trees seem to have so many adaptations capabilities that no set rules apply to anything in the way they grow.I hope no one ever figures it out as then it will be like red oak,and you will be able to buy it at Lowes/HD in perfect sized boards.
 
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LandfillLumber said:
DCBluesman is right as far as I I have read,and I did a fair amount of reading on the subject several years ago.They know that on occasion burls are caused by a few different reasons,but nothing is consistent.I do know that its a growth of many new buds,that seem to fail to become a branch.They just keep building up on top of one another,this is why a maple is much more likely to burl then an oak(adventitious buds).If you cut a maple tree at its base it will most the time send out shoots from the stump,but do that to a oak and most the time nothing.Trees seem to have so many adaptations capabilities that no set rules apply to anything in the way they grow.I hope no one ever figures it out as then it will be like red oak,and you will be able to buy it at Lowes/HD in perfect sized boards.
Click to expand...
Would buying burls at Lowe's really be such a bad thing?:wink:
 
Alice, I have been trying for years to find a way to get burls to grow. Like an oyster making a pearl, I have tried injecting things into trees and have had no results I wanted. I have a good sized piece of property and while some of the trees have burls and most don't, I still can't figure out what causes this phenomena. If your son can figure out a way to create a burl, I would think that he will be a very wealthy young man.
 
I have yet to hear anyone manage it. I do know that the color of the wood can be altered using chemicals on the ground that the roots soak up. The burl is sort of like cancer, but more like having asbestos. I think asbestos is one of worst deaths other than fire that you can experience. A single piece get into your lung. The white bloodcells attack, but the asbestos kills them. More white blood cells attack, but they keep dying until eventually your lungs become a huge mass of dead white blood cells, just like a burl in your lungs, you slowly suffocate to death and doctors can't stop it. it's the same with a burl, the cells are attacking a defective gene of some sort and as they attack they grow round and round in a similar fashion to how a tree heels a cut off branch. Simply cutting off a branch and letting the tree heal over it is not a burl and the growth over the stump will eventually stop, but it is similar and will reveal a similar look to a burl inside and out.
 
I will check with one of the local wood turning club members in my area, we just had this conversation when he brought me some clear box elder for stabilizing and dyeing and he saw that I had 1,000 pounds of box elder burl in my backyard greenhouse. He stated that someone in the northwest had created plugs on box elder trees a few years ago and was successful in creating burls, the time line was expected to be somewhere near 10 years before significant size was created. I had never heard about this before but he swears it was gospel. I will ask him about this if you want?
 
Apparently I just read that "crinkle" a tree will cause it to burl or at least to have a heck of a lot of figure. I saw a picture but it was in a text file and I could not capture it to here. It is basically rope and bamboo. You stand the bamboo on end it looks like, so you have lets just say 12 sticks of bamboo standing around the tree. You tie the rope pulling the bamboo tight against the trunk of the tree...every foot I'd say up the tree you tie it around. This causes the tree to bulge inbetween the rope and the bamboo, but not strangling the tree because the bamboo is parrallel with the tree allowing for the tree to still drink fluids. Science says there is no true evidence how a burl is made by nature, can be cancer, bugs fungus, fairy dust, who knows. But this rope method can often create a multitude of burls, and the times it doesn't, the tree has massive figure no matter what.
 
Workinforwood this is what I would call compression wood,like at a crotch or base of a tree.This is why stump wood is so much more figured then 10 feet up the tree,its own weight causes compression wood and that equals curly/swirly grain.I would like to see the site you talk about with the stressing technique.Very interesting stuff that's for sure.Victor
 
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Here is where I first discovered "Crinkle" http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/What_Causes_Burl_Figure_in_Wood.html This site lists the books to buy and read about it.

Here's the link I hope for a pdf. The picture on crinkling a tree is near the bottom of the page. homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/8007.pdf
yes, this works, cut and paste the homeorchard file up to the top of your browser and it will load..it just isn't listing as a link becuase it has no http attached to it.
 
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workinforwood said:
Here is where I first discovered "Crinkle" http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/What_Causes_Burl_Figure_in_Wood.html This site lists the books to buy and read about it.

Here's the link I hope for a pdf. The picture on crinkling a tree is near the bottom of the page. homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/8007.pdf
yes, this works, cut and paste the homeorchard file up to the top of your browser and it will load..it just isn't listing as a link becuase it has no http attached to it.
Click to expand...
How's this?

http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/8007.pdf

Barney

P.S.
Don't see the picture you're referring to. If it's on the web you can link to it.....see above!
 
That is the picture for sure. Is that crinkle? Does that make burls, or just cause blistering which is basically flames in the wood figure? I don't have these answers. But it's something at least that you can do. Maybe I should do that to my peach tree.
 
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