Processing the burr elm

I’ve at last been able to sort through the elm, which was collected over a month ago! I reckon I’m going to be quite busy over the next few weeks and buried in a lot of shavings!

There’s some stunning burrs amongst the pile, in a good variety of sizes. I hope to rough these out quite soon, so they can start the process of drying. As you can see from the top photo, there’s plenty of smaller sections too – these will be great for my thin wall bowls, which are always very popular.

Some of the larger natural edge sections…

After a day of chain sawing, when all the mess has been cleaned up! There’s a decent amount of firewood off cuts too…

The photo below shows the first batch of slabs, ready for rounding on the bandsaw. I still can’t believe this is only some of the wood, as there’s still many tons of it to prepare!

I’ll be working through this first batch over the next couple of weeks and roughing out a variety of blanks. I’ll certainly be posting some images when they’re done…