Box Elder Burl

I have a friend that is an arborist by profession and between "real" jobs he worked for a tree service and would occasionally drop some wood in my front yard on his way home.   He now has a real job and I don't see much wood from him anymore.  He had told me that he had a friend in Elkton Md. with a box elder with a burl on it that they were going to take down but I forgot about it until I got a call late November that it had been cut down and some was saved for me.  We decided to go up Dec. 1 and pick it up.  I got my father-in-law's truck and we drove 2 hrs.  This seemed crazy and then the three of us loaded these huge chunks of tree in the back of the truck.  The largest was 40" at the widest.  There was some red in it but it wasn't really red all over so I was thinking if this was a crazy trip.  But as you can see by the close up, the burl has promise.  I got a lot of blanks out of this, gave some to the club.

I roughed out some bowl blanks and took a couple of small burl blanks and made bowls from them.  They came out stunning and I knew I had a large blank waiting for me.  Finally on Christmas eve I got a chance to start turning the big blank.  I started between centers just enough to get it centered and make a foot to put a small faceplate on it.  I rounded it and cored it into two bowls.  My coring sucks and I did not want to make a funnel so one core was enough.

I have tried to make the best bowls I can and the two little ones did not move too much after turning wet so decided to turn one of these the wet.  I left it a little thicker than I probably should have but I wanted to be safe.
Here is some of the detail in the bowls and finally a shot of the shapes of the bowls.