You get different variations of figured maple like tiger, spalted, fiddle back, curl, and birds-eye. You need to harvest the wood at the junction between the tree roots and the trunk. Turning by Charles Cadenhead. The wood has a pale, light-brown wood turning wood types 800 that takes an excellent polish. If you are unable to find this wood locally, you can look for it online. Apply additional coats in 30 minutes. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and totally inert.

In this article, we look at some of the best wood for turning that you can get. While some of the kinds of wood mentioned here come under the category of exotic and perhaps you may not find them easily, the others are. While you may be interested in reading about these types, you may not get all of them readily. Hence, it would help if you looked around. You may be surprised at what you can dig out. Figured wood is wood that contains aberrations in the grain that forms different shapes.

You get different variations of figured maple like tiger, spalted, fiddle back, curl, and birds-eye. If you are unable to find this wood locally, you can look for it online. It is a tough wood so you will need sharp tools to work on it. Walnut has a pronounced end grain, which may cause tears at the bottom of a bowl. It can create a rough surface, which may prove difficult to sand. Hence, you have to proceed with care. However, you will get satisfactory results with a clear finish and several coats of Danish oil.

Cherry wood responds equally well to varnish, clear lacquer, and oil finishes. You can get the best results by thinning the first coat which seals the surface. Then you need to sand it with steel wool or grit sandpaper and recoat after the coating is dry. The extensive color range of cherry wood from pale yellowish-white to reddish-brown is interspersed with dark streaks. When sanded and stained or polished, you can get some attractive patterns.

The wood of a box elder tree sometimes exhibits streaks and flecks in a raspberry-like color. This makes the wood attractive to woodturners, particularly for making colorful platters, goblets, and bowls. The red streaks originate from a fungus called Fusarium negundi. These trees grow up to heights of feet. The trunks are straight and clear so that you can get a lot of wood without any defects or cracks. Rosewood grows in Asia and Africa, but it is difficult to procure as it is an endangered species.

Rosewood enjoys a prized position for its deep reddish-brown color and characteristic fragrance that lasts for years. You can make exceptional items like chessmen and parts of musical instruments from rosewood.

However, most of the madrone you find in the United States comes from a mountain range that starts in British Columbia and ends up on the central coast of California. You can make elegant vases from the Pacific madrone. We find about 20 species of red elm in temperate forests around the world. Elm grows up to feet tall in the forest, although open-grown trees may not become so high.

The wood has a pale, light-brown shade that takes an excellent polish. You can make uniquely-shaped vases from red elm. The result is black streaks that can create a striking marbling effect on turning spalted maple. Species like maple are prone to spalting. You can make beautiful wooden bowls and other similar articles by turning spalted maple. Under the best growing conditions, the trees are reported to reach heights of about feet 30 m. They produce straight clear trunks that are 35 to 50 feet 10 to 15 m long, with average diameters of up to 30 inches 75 cm , but may occasionally reach 60 inches cm.

Madrone Arbutus menziesii is sometimes called madrona or madrono, and scientifically is always preceded by the word Pacific. That's because there's a Texas version of the species, and a Mexican one, too. But most of the madrone you see as woodworking stock and veneer comes from a range that extends from southern British Columbia down to California's central coast.

In that coastal band, you can find madrone everywhere there's a forest, and in nearly any size. In rugged mountain terrain madrone may only reach shrub size. Elm claims about 20 species in the temperate regions of the world. In the forest, elm often grows ' tall. But open-grown elms rarely reach that height. Instead, they form a spreading, umbrella-like crown valued for shade. Turning by Rob Wallace, Ames Iowa. Spalting is a figure pattern caused by fungus growing in trees and logs.

It produces black streaks usually growing with the grain and can result in a beautiful marbling. Some species are more prone to spalting such as maple like that shown , birch and beech, while others such as walnut rarely spalt.

The fungus enters the tree through an injury and starts to spread. The trick is to get dense spalting before the lumber turns to punk. It is not uncommon to find a log with spalting penetrating the end grain for a short distance but this can be little more than a distraction. Wherever Osage orange grew, it had many a use. At one time, a Plains Indian brave would gladly trade a horse and blanket for a bow made of the wood.

The reputation of such bows spread widely from the land of their makers-the Osage Indians of Arkansas and Missouri. Bows of this hard, strong wood even were found by explorers in use as far north as Montana. That's why in many parts of the nation the wood carries the name bois d'arc, French for wood of the bow.

Americanized, the term becomes bowdark. In species such as sycamore the face of the quartersawn lumber will display a prominent ray fleck on its face. These rays are part of the cell structure of the growing tree that radiate outward from the pith of the log to the sapwood.

When the log is sawn with the annual rings perpendicular these rays are bisected and show up on the face of each piece of quartersawn lumber as a shiny band. When sawn, each log reveals its own unique figured pattern of ray flecks. This is only visible in those species that have these rays in the cellular structure. Turning by Marlen Kemmet.

Light in orange color, with occasional pinkish colored streaks, Bradford pear is an extremely hard and dense wood, but turns easily. It sands well and will takes on a high polish. Usually available in very limited quantities, as the tree is an ornamental found most often in urban landscapes.

The bowl shown was turned from a natural-edged live oak blank harvested from a tree base where roots meet the trunk. The natural edge is the "underground edge" of the tree facing downward. According to the turner, this wood turns wonderfully when green and doesn't split due to the interlocking grain. Padauk grows in tropical climates, although the geography changes from rain forest to dry, nearly treeless plains with each species. Depending on the species, padauk's coarse-grained heartwood varies in color from a lustrous purple-red to orange-red.

With age and exposure to sunlight, it turns deep maroon. Quartersawn wood features a pronounced ribbon stripe. Turning by Ron Lenz. Cocobolo Dahlbergia retusa belongs to the same genus as Brazilian rosewood, and in fact, has similar properties. Rosewood, however, likes South America's rain forests. Cocobolo prefers the drier, upland savanna country of Central America's Pacific Coast.

This wood is a well-known sensitizer that can produce a poison-ivy type rash or other reaction in allergic individuals. If you have an allergy history, work cocobolo with full protection: gloves, long sleeves, a dust mask, and a protective skin cream. After I milled some custom oak molding, then stained and finished it to match the existing woodwork Skip to main content.

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