From buying the wood to finished item

From buying the wood to finished item

I thought you might like to see part of the process that I used recently to make some buckeye burr hybrid blanks and a finished box with one of them.

First off allot of people don't realise how hard it is to buy buckeye burr in the u.k and how few American sellers are willing to sell it!

I found this piece of blonde buckeye burr on the US version of eBay and he was willing to ship outside the US

how the wood looked when it was delivered

the wood was covered in a type of wax but luckily it was slightly oversized at 70mm so I was able to cut a thin strip of each edge on the bandsaw removing the wax from the outside surfaces.

I cut it into 3 blanks and used a burr in a dremel type tool to clean out the bark inclusion cavity's

after cutting to size and cleaning

The wood was then stabilised under vacuum in cactus juice resin to harden it

being stabilised in the vacuum chamber

once cured I cleaned out any excess stabilising resin from the cavity's and could cast it with coloured resin to form solid blanks.

I chose one in green, one in blue and one in a smoky grey/black

the 3 blanks after casting

I have sold the green blank on my website and have turned the black blank into a box, I am still unsure as to what to do with the blue blank.

the finished black resin box