When I was living in Lexington, Kentucky I got a call one day from a friend who said that there was some wood available in the little town of Midway, just a few miles away. Midway is an old and charming little town in the heart of the bluegrass region. I called, and a dentist who owned the land said that I could have some wood.

It turns out that the land hosted a late 18th century inn called the Porter House. Most have heard of a porterhouse steak and that is where it originated. The inn now serves as a dentist’s office and residence. The tree was a mammoth silver maple. The neighbors had complained that if it fell it might damage nearby structures. So it had been cut down. I have no idea how old the tree was but I would estimate that it was over 100 years old.

When I drove into the alley that separated the Porter House from the neighbors I saw an array of bolts of wood with grass grown up around them. Some had fungus actively growing on them. It did not look very appealing to the casual observer. The rounds of wood were so large that I had to saw them in half to be able to lift them into my van and even that was an arduous task. The fresh cut wood surfaces smelled musty and were mottled in their appearance. When I had loaded all the wood I could carry I headed back to the shop to cut some bowl blanks and rough turned them.

What I was dealing with was spalt wood. This is caused by fungus attacking the dead wood. When alive, the tree’s immunity protects it from bacterial and fungal decay. When it dies, these microorganisms go to work to reduce the wood to carbon dioxide and water. Without these necessary aspects of nature, all the wood and leaf litter would stay with us and I don’t even want to think about the fire hazard that would make. The fungus can cause the wood to be black in areas due to formation of fungus spores. In other areas it blanches the natural color of the wood. The final result is very interesting color and pattern variation in the same piece of wood. The black lines may follow the wood fibers and reveal a wavy pattern.

In the past, timber men would regard this as a defect. Spalt wood is softer and less stable than the normal wood. So it would have been relegated to the fire wood pile or just left for the fungus to finish the job. It is not even considered good fire wood because some of the energy stored in the wood has already been consumed by the fungus.

Spalt wood is definitely harder to work than the same wood which is free of decay. It requires a softer hand with the tools and produces some design limitations. Sometimes it just won’t do what you want it do do and the piece must be discarded. However, I think it is well worth the effort for the visual display it produces. People seem to be naturally drawn to the color and pattern variation.

I got several large bowls rough turned from the damp wood and put them in paper bags with the top sealed so that they could dry more slowly to avoid cracking, or checking—as woodworkers call this tendency of wood to split itself apart when it dries unevenly. The rest of the large pieces I covered with a tarp and left to fend for themselves.

Eventually I moved along with my wood to Maryland where I live now. At a show I sold one of those large spalt bowls and the purchaser became my first collector. He and his wife purchased two more bowls from the same wood and then commissioned some large candle holders to hold three inch pillar candles. In the pictures above you see the rough forms before they were turned as well as the finished products. I treasure the remaining pieces of this wood and have turned some of it into wooden jewelry.

So what would be considered trash in another era has found a place of respect with those who appreciate the infinite variety and creativity of nature, even when it is tearing down and not building up. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If we have a limited vision of utility, we may overlook some of nature’s hidden treasures. When we are open to all possibilities then we find riches in what others would discard.

Once you have turned your hundred ugly bowls you have paid your dues and developed some skill. You know what works and what doesn’t. You can judge what is a safe design and what is not. So off you go making objects of similar form and design.

I had my wares at a Craft Fair the other day and a man stopped to chat with me. He said that all my work looked the same. While I was very aware of the minor differences in my pieces, he was really correct. My designs and executions were predictable. I used classic forms and produced smooth surfaces. I did not take many chances.

Some of this may come from my desire to produce something functional from every good piece of wood I come across. Somehow I feel that wood is a trust and that it is my responsibility to make a useful object that will prolong the life of the wood from the once living tree. It took the tree so long to make the wood.

Recently I was visiting a friend in Lancaster, PA. As we walked to an art show in Long’s Park, we passed an open field used for athletics. I noticed a tree with drooping branches. Most deciduous tree branches don’t droop. It was a very large tree so I walked over to examine it more closely. It was a pear tree. It must have been more than three feet diameter and it was loaded with pears. I was reminded of the saying that it is the tree with the most fruit whose branches bow the lowest. I said I would really love to have some pear wood to work. Ever since reading about pear wood in James Krenov’s books I had been intrigued by the wood. My friend and I continued our walk to the park and I forgot about the incident.

The next week my wife came in after a walk in the neighborhood with a leaf and asked me to identify it. I told her it was a Bradford pear. She said she got it from a limb which had broken from a neighbor’s tree and it appeared to her eye to be large enough to make something from it. I walked over to take a look and agreed with her. I left a note in the mailbox. The next day the neighbor called and said the professionals had already removed the limb as it was blocking the driveway but would I like to have the whole tree that remained.

Bradford pears are well known for their rapid symmetrical growth and white flowers in the spring. They have been favored by landscapers for the past 20 years. Unfortunately, their growth habit makes them subject to shedding large limbs after about 18 years of growth. Some cities are removing them from city streets because of this habit. My neighbor told me that he had six Bradford pears planted in his yard when he moved in 22 years ago. This was the last one remaining and it was beginning to go.

This seems to happen to me so many times. I have a desire for a species of wood and then forget about it. The next thing I know I am blessed with an abundance of it. So now I had a whole tree to play with and did not have to be so darn conservative.

Nature’s attempt to buttress weak forks of a tree makes for spectacular grain patterns when cut at right angles to the pattern. In this case, cutting the log in half by connecting the cut to the middle of the growth centers of the two limbs of the fork will reveal the crotch or flame grain as it is sometimes called. Below is a cherry platter made from such a cut.

On seeing this my wife suggested that I make a set of six of them. To this I replied that it would probably take a set of six cherry trees as this wood is only in the fork of the tree and many of the slices check badly on drying. I never did really understand the feminine desire for sets of matching pieces.

This new found pear wood, however, was not large enough to do with what I did with the cherry. Yet I had a desire to do something different but still capture the wild grain. I looked at one forked log and decided to take some risks. I decided to bore right down into the crotch starting where the limbs parted from the main trunk.

This meant that I had to risk the bottom of the vessel splitting or checking in the drying process as the base would contain the center of growth of the tree. This is wood that is notorious for checking as it dries. Usually you try to eliminate it entirely.

By turning it green before it had a chance to dry, I reasoned, it might reduce the internal stresses enough so that the remaining heart wood in the base of the vessel would not have the force to split the piece.

So, I mounted the log between centers with the main trunk of the log parallel to the bed of the lathe and turned it roughly round and then began to shape the outside.

By turning a tenon or plug on the base end I was able to remove it from between centers and mount it in a scroll chuck on one end with the other end free so that I could make the hollowing cuts.

Making hollow vessels is something I have not been doing very long and find it a bit challenging. This time the process seemed to go fairly smoothly. To judge the thickness of the wall I used a bright light behind the turning and when I could see light transmitted through the wall of the turning as it spun I knew that I was about there. I was a bit surprised that light will penetrate a turning wall that is 1/8th of an inch thick as this is still quite strong in a circular form.

Some of the rim of my hollow vessel was flat where the limbs had been sawn off and some was natural edged wood. How could I make this look like something? After some study when the piece was removed from the lathe I decided to carve some flowing curves to replace the straight sawn lines of parts of the rim. The other parts I left natural so you could see that it was made from a crotch piece of wood.

Being turned thin walled while still green, the wood did not check or the bottom split. I was rewarded in my risk taking with the lovely flame grain pattern on each side of the vessel nearest to the crotch. Some members of my turning club have said that pear wood is boring and seek to enhance it with colored dyes. To my eye the grain pattern is fascinating and needed nothing but some tung oil and wax to give it a light sheen.

Over the years in my travels around the country I have accumulated a lot of wood. My wife says that I am a wood magnet and wood just naturally is attracted to me. Here I am holding a bowl blank made from what I call Broadway maple. All my wood has a story and since I come from the tradition of southern story tellers, here is the story of Broadway maple.

Actually I live on Broadway Road in Lutherville, Maryland. It is farmland which has given way to development in more recent years but still retains the open feeling of the country. Every day I would pass by this tree in a neighbor’s yard on Broadway Road and noted that it was dying. Several large limbs including one in the crown had begun to decay. We have had some very dry summers here in Maryland and the stress finally got to this tree.

I had the thought to stop by and ask the home owner if I could have a piece of the wood when they cut the tree down. I even thought of offering to cut it down myself. Since it was situated on the corner of the lot with utility poles on two of the four sides, and being 69 years of age, I thought the better of the idea. I stopped by several times but I never could catch anyone at home.

Then in early February I saw the professional tree cutters taking it down. I have missed my chance I thought to myself and drove on. However, when I passed by the next day I saw that the tree service had removed the small limbs but the trunk was still lying there. Maybe I still have a chance, I thought, and resolved to stop by that evening and beg for a piece of the tree. As I headed out the door that evening my wife suggested that I take a pencil and paper and write them a note in case they were not home. Although this was the sixth time I had gone out to make contact with the tree owner, I doubt this practical idea would have ever occurred to me. It did occur to my wife. Sure enough, no one was home. So I wrote a note saying that I was a neighbor just up the road and asked if I could have some of the wood.

The next morning, early, I got a phone call from the owner who said I could have as much as I wanted as it was just going to be hauled up to Pennsylvania and cut for firewood. He said that I had better hurry as the tree expert was coming with a big truck to haul it away that very day. In another thirty minutes he called me back. It turns out that the tree expert was very happy not to have to haul the wood to Pennsylvania and would be happy to deliver it to my yard a mile further up on Broadway Road. He would bring me the whole tree. It was a very old silver maple, about three and a half feet in diameter at the stump.

My next obstacle was my landlord. I rent a small home from him which is right next door to his home. He is a retired lawn care business owner and keeps the premises looking like a park. I had some reservations about dumping this huge tree on his lawn. However, he has gotten too old to cut fire wood for his wood burning stove, but loves the heat from it in the winter months. So I explained to him that all the wood I could not use I would cut and split for his use. Besides it was winter and the grass wasn’t growing anyway. I squeaked by on that logic and several days later a huge truck pulled in and, with deft motions of the lifting arm, deposited a very large amount of wood on the lawn.

It took about seven weeks to get it all cut. I could see that from the staining of the dying limbs that the wood was going to have beautiful colors in it, ranging from pinks to tans, dark brown and even some purple. As I cut into it, I was rewarded with the subtle beauty of the decay-stained wood. Maple is usually a uniform whitish-tan color, and nothing to get excited about. In this tree, as the limbs had been dying for several years, the staining products of decay had gradually percolated down through the sound wood giving the marvelous variations in color and pattern. Actually it is like chromatography where different molecules migrate at different rates of speed and thus colors become concentrated in noticeable bands. It is the same technology that chemists use to separate out molecules in a complex mixture. Here, nature did it for me for free.

Using my big 660 Sthil saw, I hacked away until I had thirty five bowl blanks. Sometimes I have trouble starting this saw because it has so much compression, and I am not as young as I used to be. Once I took the saw to the dealer and said it would not start. When I went to pick it up I inquired as to what the problem had been. The repairman was summoned and told me that there was nothing wrong with the saw. He looked down at my slender frame and said as politely as he could: “What you got there is a Paul Bunyan saw, man.” It is the second to the largest they make but I really needed the power for cutting the large chunks of wood I use.
So, now I cheat a little and spray some ether in the carburetor for slightly easier starts, and hope that my shoulder will outlast the saw.

To get a bowl blank I first cut sections of the tree using the same cut you would use to cut the tree down, that is a crosscut bolt of wood. Then that bolt is turned up on its end and cuts are made on either side to remove the heart section. This is a very important step as the tight rings near the center of the tree always split when the wood dries. This leaves the two halves, missing the heart section. Then I cut the slab off the outer part of the bolt so it will lie flat. Using a large compass I scribe the largest circle I can get from that piece and then either use the chain saw or the shop band saw to cut off the corners until the blank is roughly a round shape.

This round disc of wood is mounted with screws to a faceplate on the lathe, while still wet, and turned to get the outside shape. It is then remounted in a special chuck with jaws that grip the plug, or tenon as it is called in woodworking, to turn the inside shape. As the wet wood spins on the lathe, the water flies out due to the centrifugal force, and may give off quite a spray. Yet turning green wood is so much easier than turning dry wood that this is not much of a bother. Wet wood only has sixty percent of the hardness of dry wood. So the wood turning gouge just slips through that wet wood and produces shavings up to a foot long and the whole process goes quickly.

The next step is to put the bowl blank, that has been rough turned and left thicker than normal, in a place to dry. After trying all kinds of methods, I have come to favor just putting it in a paper bag and closing it up and leaving it for months or longer. I find the chemicals used to speed drying are offensive, change the character of the wood and are not all that effective in preventing checking, or cracking, of the bowl wall due to uneven drying. The paper bag acts like a little air chamber to make the drop in humidity less drastic than the outside air.

When it is dry as you see in the picture above, it is ready to be remounted to the lathe and turned true, and to final dimensions. As the wood dries it warps and is no longer completely round. The extra waste wood you left on when it was turned green is enough to allow the bowl to be turned true again before final shaping and finishing.

Many months later, I delivered a finished bowl and some implements and a rolling pin to the wife of the tree owner as I had promised. Her eyes almost popped out of her head. She exclaimed in a very loud voice: “I had no idea that beautiful bowl was in that old tree”

So, my point is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To her the dying tree was an eyesore and to her husband it was a liability as it might fall and damage the neighbors plantings. To me it was a treasure, as I thought it would be. To my landlord it was a warm winter, although he did get a little nervous about me getting up the sawdust that covered over the grass after I was done sawing.

The other thing I have learned is that much wood is available in the city just for the asking. Timber people seldom are interested in just one tree and they are fearful that it may have nails or wire buried in it from living in close contact with humans. It can damage their expensive saws and planers. Many times, people will feel that you are doing them a great favor by taking the wood away. Otherwise, much beautiful wood just ends up in landfills or fireplaces.

So keep a weather eye on the neighborhood. Suburbia is dotted with fine trees, all of which will have to come down sooner or later or fall heir to some natural disaster. If you share the finished product with the donor of the tree, then they will be most appreciative and will probably keep you in mind when they hear of another tree that needs to come down.