Cutting up the burr sycamore tree

I featured this amazing tree in my blog last December, so here’s some photo’s of it being cut up. Ever since it arrived, I’ve been dying to have a look inside!...

After drawing a few large circles on the outside, I cut it in half near the centre. My decision was to allow for some very large natural edge designs and then see what the rest of the timber could offer. As soon as I made the fist cut, I finally got a look inside – the markings and colours were incredible and darker than usual for sycamore. You can see the burr covering the outside…

Bit by bit, I processed the trunk, chain sawing it into slabs. Some of these were nearly three feet across, so should make some fairly impressive bowls…

After a couple of hours, there's not much of the tree left. In the background, two dumpy bags are slowly filling up with shavings - thank you Frank for helping with this on the day!...

One of the larger burry sections, destined to be a natural edge design. The bark will either be pressure cleaned, or completely removed if necessary…

The top image shows just some of the slabs I managed to get out of the tree. These will be roughed out over the next couple of weeks and photo's will be posted soon...