Aspen burls are hard to find but that is the easiest part of turning one into a bowl. Aspen burl bowls are spectacular with amazing grain figuring and colors, but they are among the most difficult burls to turn. This is why you don’t see so many bowls made from aspen burls. Never the less, these are my favorite bowls by far and I always turn the burls green. Here is a recent aspen burl bowl and I think you can see why I love turning them. Most aspen burls are partly decayed,

I just completed guiding students in my 2.25 day wood turning class at the North House Folk School and my Hovland shop. My three students (Joe, Buddy, and Rod) did a great job turning bark edged bowls from cherry, honey locust, cherry burl, sugar maple burl, black walnut, and box elder. We also worked on sharpening, wood drying, stabilizing, and sanding techniques. We all had a great time and I think the students learned a lot and left really motivated to turn more challengin

I am working my way through a number of large black ash burls I purchased on a local Indian Reservation. It is exciting since these burls have been showing great grain figuring. The first photo in the following grid shows the complete burl that is about 16" in diameter. The main log had burls wrapping all the way around it. I cut the burly log perpendicular to the axis of the log in preparation for an end-grain turning that would hopefully show a cross section of several burl