what is that mesquite thang?

[Jeff Jilg]

I got a small load of mesquite. One of the mesquite pieces is this "thang". The guy who cut the mesquite says he sees them all the time. It is a branch. The two ends are smaller than the middle. The middle looks like a bunch of sinews. It's about 3 feet long and about 2 feet wide in the middle. Doesn't look like the typical burl to me.

What the heck is that thang - is it a mesquite burl? Does anyone know?

I'm not sure how to cut it. I poured some boiling water in it and some of it seemed to go in. The boiling water was to kill some critters - big carpenter ants that were in some of the pieces. If I find some buried treasure in the middle do I have to claim it on my IRS form? :cool2:

 

[Erwin Nistler]

I expect you will find a lot of voids and bark in there. Also some of that "cresote" like pitch that weeps out of mesquite.
Let us know what is realy in there when you cut it.

 

[Jeff Jilg]

I'm hoping someone else who has cut open one of these thangs posts a message. If not I'll probably cut it down the middle and make 2 turned/carved vases out of it, with the middle part of the thang defining the rims of the vases.

If there's an alien in there I wanna know where he came from.

 

[dkulze]

Me friend, you are looking at a Mesquite bomb. If you cut into it, it could go off and destroy your entire shop. You need to get it to someone who knows propper and safe disposal techniques.

Now I just happen to be a Mesquite Unusually Large Lump Eradication Technician (MULLET) and would be willing to dispose of this abombination (get it? aBOMBination? I just slay myself) for a minimal fee. Just ship it to me and I'll take care of it from there.

Good luck and, if you come across any more of these, have them shipped to me quickly. They become more unstable with time! Don't stop to think about it!! Just ship it quick!!!!!!

Dietrich H. Kulze, M.U.L.L.E.T.

P.S.(looks like a Mesquite burl to me)

 

[Jeff Jilg]

Great posting Dietrich - I appreciate the humor. I'll try to put it on a truck tomorrow, but if it accidently splits in half then I'll be forced to turn and carve both pieces. It sure is a weird looking thang.

 

[arbud]

nice try...

Dietrich, I tried that w/the lad concerning his personal safety and bowl-roughing. He said that he shipped that mustard-colored boat anchor he uses for a lathe but it has never arrived.

These young'uns are gonna have to learn that old age and deceit will over-come youth and skill every time. 😀

 

[Jeff Jilg]

Bud - you mean the lathe never arrived? I'll have to check the shipping receipt.

 

[Jeff Jilg]

A local (Austin) woodturner just told me the piece is in fact a burl. He indicated it may contain some good prize wood, or it may be nothing. The only way to find out is to cut into it. He also said that sometimes mistletoe causes this to happen.

I'll post pictures when I cut into this weird thang. If you don't hear from me again, it means there was an alien in it and they beamed me up. 😱

 

[Rick Prevett]

Be sure to welcome our woodturning alien overlords. 😀

 

[Jeff Jilg]

mesquite thang intermediate results

I finally cut open the mesquite thang, and posted some pics below. There were aliens in there and they "invited" me up to their ship. I use the word "invited" lightly since I don't think I really had a choice.

Alien sidebar:

I wanted to know about technology, and how their spaceship worked since it looked like it came from the first StarWars trilogy instead of the more recent trilogy. They said they were short on time and that we either needed to have a discussion about woodturning, or they were going to extract information directly from my brain with their Neuro-Analyzer (Model 3520a â„¢).

That didn’t sound very pleasant, so I showed them pics of the equipment I used and they called me a “primitiveâ€Â. That's when the name calling started.

Me: "Primitive! We are using the best equipment available. I can make a pretty good bowl in about an hour, ‘four-eyes’ ".
Four-Eyes (F.E.): "Yes, 'primitive'. Most species we visit just push the log thru a processor with a conveyor belt. You guys are clueless."
Me: " 'Clueless'? Well how about you, you guys were living in a mesquite thang. What the heck was that all about? I don't see any permits for that, you lawbreakers."
F.E.: "Our studies take us into unknown territories where we need detailed long-term examination of the specimen. We don't need permits, we are vastly superior to your species. Most of the wood art we create is roughly the size of your typical houses. One way we measure the intelligence of a species is through the variety of art they make in a particular medium such as woodturning. For Homo Sapiens our current evaluation is indicating a ranking near the bottom of the barrel – we don’t see much variety."
Me: (That last comment really riled me up.) “ ‘Variety’? I don’t suppose you guys have an internet connection – did you ever think about visiting the AAW forums, an AAW symposium, or the AAW gallery in St. Paul? There are all sorts of pieces on display in the AAW photo gallery for your bug-eyed viewing pleasure.†(I forgot to mention their heads kinda looked like big cicada heads with those weird bulgy eyes, except they had 4 of the weird bulgy eyes. That made it even worse every time I looked at them since cicadas give me the creeps).
F.E.: “What is this ‘internet’ thing you mentioned?â€Â

….well, the conversation went all uphill from there. I hooked them up with a nice broadband connection. They treated me to an intergalactic mocha nectoid drink (which tasted like coffee) and we browsed all sorts of woodturning pictures on the AAW and other internet forums. I think they increased our ranking substantially, and they plan to monitor the upcoming 2005 Symposium. Did I mention they gave me a self-maintaining “Mini-Fusion Power Kit ™†so the woodworking doesn’t increase my utility bills? I’ll let you know how that works out if I ever figure out the manual, which is a weird 3†hyperdimensional cube thing-a-ma-bob.​

oh yeah, about the Mesquite thang…

Mesquite Thang comments:

I attached a few pics of the cut-open mesquite thang. The two pieces are 20â€ÂW x 20â€ÂH each. There are lots of things I could make. They weigh 80-100 pounds each so it should be fun getting them up on the lathe. The innards are “solidâ€Â, but they are not burled. There are a lot of inclusions and cracks.

It’s mostly straight grained. Overall this is the first mesquite thang/burl I cut open. It should be a lot of fun to create something out of it. I put some lines for potential cuts on the last pic.

Yellow – maybe this could become a large open vase with the lobes partially carved out.

Magenta – the half on the right is pretty solid and could potentially have a slab cut off the top to make a platter with a lot of natural edge on it. I would be afraid to cut it too thin though, there are a lot of cracks.

Blue – this could become a vase with the bottom of the vase on the line.

Comments are welcome. How would you cut it up?

 

[Mike Schwing]

Aw man, Jeff, please consider turning a natural edged bowl straight down the center, end grain style. The natural edge you have there is a real treat and would be amazing done end grain style. Go over to WOW and look at Anthony Harris' album posting of his recent cedar end grain work. It would be similar.

 

[Jeff Jilg]

Mike - I found the Anthony Harris piece you referenced. It is gorgeous. And this mesquite is quite similar, and not common IMO. You talked me into it, I'll do one like that.

For those who didn't see it, the piece is a 4" slice from a cedar log similar to the magenta line in my last photo. I don't know how many I can accomplish with this wood since it is highly cracked. But there is at least one of those in the 2 mesquite halves.

 

[Steve Worcester]

Umm, Jeff, please go to the mirror immediately and check you did not chainsaw off any of the frontal lobes of your brain.

 

[Jeff Jilg]

If I make that platter/bowl like Mike suggested then there's no doubt that plenty of brain jokes will be sent my way. A slice off the top of that log will look just like a brain slice. :cool2:

On the other hand my alien adventure may have left me a few brain cells short.

 

[dkulze]

Dang it!!!! It could have been mine!!! MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!

<sob>

If you get another one, cut it lengthwise and make natural edge nested bowls with a bowl saver. Really cool.

Dietrich

 

[Jeff Jilg]

Today I cut up some cortex (brain) slices. 🙂

In the group shot, the dark one was waxed from about a week ago when I cut it in half. The dark one is 4" thick, 3 others are 3" thick each, and the base is 5" thick. The dots on the individual piece are raindrops - indicating what would happen if I put on a finish like tung oil. A lacquer finish probably won't darken them as much.

Dietrich - I really didn't know if the whole thing was hollow or not. My feeling was that if it ended up being hollow, then a lengthwise cut would have resulted in 2 pieces instead of 8 or 10 pieces.

Also there are a lot of cracks. Turning these pieces will be done using slow RPMs and lots of sharpening trips. Because of the potential for them to fall apart on the lathe or later, I will probably cut them to 1.5" thickness minimum. Maybe they could be tapered near the edges. An alternative is to avoid turning them altogether and just carving them to the highlight the brain lobes.

The yellow sapwood is real pretty. Whereas the bark is not that pretty. I might carve/sand off all the bark to expose the sapwood.

Opinions on any of this are more than welcome. What would you do if you had this wood? I'm open to influencing opinions.

 

[dkulze]

Well, if I had this wood, one thing I'd seriously consider doing is investing in a gallon of 2 part epoxy. I'd sink a slice in the epoxy with as much additional depth as I could then turn a wide and shallow bowl with the mesquite at the center, raised epoxy sides (shallow), and a segmented rim on top of that. Colored epoxy could be used but clear would make for serious funky.

Two things if you do the epoxy route. Use slow setting epoxy, as it generates quite a bit of heat as it cures and a large enough amount of fast setting will ramp up to a boil as it accellerates itself from the heat. And work real hard to remove all bubbles so that you don't have voids in the epoxy since it is a one shot gig. Sanding off/down the bark would probably help with this, and turning the cracked area in the center of the bowl first so that you can find a clean curve with no bubbles as a baseline is a possibility too.

Past that, I'm mostly a hollow form guy and would probably have killed myself by trying to make the whole burl into one big vase with voids in the sides. Really cool until it blows up on ya. Then it's ER time.

Good luck,
Dietrich

 

[Jeff Jilg]

Good suggestions Dietrich. I'll be working on the brain slices this next week. Since they are still green I might just prep a couple for the drying stage. The epoxy treatments you suggested sound like good ideas. They would certainly help with some of the unstable pieces. Thanks.

I also need to dovetail in the work on the new deck...which needs to be done by June 15.

 

[uniquewoodworld.com]

Wow, Jeff, thats some toe curling stock youve got there 🙂

 

[Jeff Jilg]

2 of the mesquite slabs have been turned into platters. The wood is still green.

Stabilizing and drying the platters:
To stabilize the wood it is being soaked in DeNatured Alcohol (DNA). Unfortunately there are 2 problems with this.

1. The existing DNA has been used to soak other bowls and is quite dark. I believe it is tannin which will act as a stain. It would be a shame to lose the yellow sapwood coloring on these nice platters.
2. The slabs cannot fit in my regular 5 gallon bucket. The slabs are up to 19" diameter.

So I have decided to dedicate some DNA to each piece, but I'll do it in a thrifty way. Since these pieces are being taken to final shape I am not doing my normal process of Anchorsealing. That would require returning, and the platters are going to warp. Plus the wax would get on some of the bark inclusions which I don't plan to remove. So the wax method can't really be used on these end-grain platters.

To soak them, I made a bed of shavings for each. Then I laid a thick shower curtain liner in the bed and placed a platter in each one. The shavings were pushed up around the edges of the platters. About 1/3 gallon was poured into each. Then I twisted up the tops and tied them. Pics of this are found below.

Turning experience:
The 2 platters are not very stable for turning. They are end-grain and they have cracks. As a result both of these platters are 1" thick. They would look nicer if they were tapered on the edges. But the tapered edges would break off the first time someone touched them. Both of these platters have a single lobe which just hangs outside the main platter without any support. Again, I was afraid those would just break off if the pieces were tapered.

Turning the platters is a challenge because of the instability. One of them has a crack running right thru the center. Since I turned these between centers, I left the tenons on. The tenons can be used to remount the pieces when they are dry if I need to. Or they will be pared off.

The wood is quite hard even when green. 3 bowl gouges are being used, with frequent trips to the grinder. Because of the instability and the sharpening, it took 4-5 hours (each) to turn these platters. The resulting surface may not have to be sanded. It is quite smooth except for a couple of places.

On both platters a rim was left proud of the bowl portion. This will be textured when finish work begins in 2 or 3 months. They should dry pretty fast since they are endgrain.

Pictures and dimensions:
3 pictures show one of the platters:
- laying in the plastic
- plastic being closed around the platter
- plastic with DNA in it, tied with twine

Other picture shows a "finished" platter (on carpet). Note the tenon with the crack running thru it. It's a big tenon because I didn't want it to fly apart if it was turned any smaller. Diameter of both pieces is 17"-18", and 1" thick. The bowl rim areas are 2" thick.

 

[Clem Wixted]

Wow!

Jeff,

That "thang" sure looks different now that you have labored over it.

You have more nerve than I do to try to turn a piece like that.

It looks like the results will be worth it.

Clem