English White Oak Burl Slab

[Wizard of Saws (Guest)]

I recently acquired a large slab of a white oak burl (about 48" X 36" and almost 2" thick. I'm thinking I'm going to be spending a lot of time scraping and planing in the weeks to come. It has a couple cracks at the end where it was removed from the tree. It has been air dried. I would like to prevent the cracks from wandering further or increasing in size. I am thinking about using butterfly keys to hold it together and I would also like to fill the cracks. Would an epoxy be best or should I just leave them?

[Sinead (Guest)]

What a great piece (drool)
The obvious answer is ... it depends on what you want to do with it. At that size if left whole, it could be a conference room table. Or, it would make dozens of beautiful turned bowls, vases, etc. or millions of pens. :-)
How long has it been air drying - is it still moving? The butterfly keys sound like a good idea. Drilling a hole at the inside end of the crack should stop it. Adding a coloring to the epoxy (like stone dust, acrylic color, or brass filings) is an effective way to turn a defect into a feature.

hope this helps,
sinead
bomba_design@hotmail.com

[barbsiddiqui]

Hello, Sinead, welcome to the forum. I have never heard of adding 'brass filings' to epoxy fill...could you expand on how this is done? Do you intend them to show as an outline shape of brass, or color in the epoxy? Sounds interesting. -Barb S.

[Wizard of Saws (Guest)]

To be honest, I haven't made a decision yet about what to do with it. I have this bad habit :) of collecting pieces of unique wood and then not doing anything with them because I hate to alter them. If I do decide to do something with this burl, I will probably turn it into a desk or table top. It's fairly large. I work for a company called [http://www.woodworkersshop.com] and I couldn't resist these when they came in. We were all drooling over them. I just put some pictures up on the website. Check them out. Thanks for the comments.

linda