Bradford peartree logs question

Seal the ends fast. I have had great success turning bowls from Bradford Pear. It is a rather featureless wood but turns and sands very well and makes a glass-like finish.

Bradford Pear is very fine grained, almost like Boxwood. It is a rather bland tan color with little grain figure. It warps quite a bit when turned wet. Dry, you get these wispy fine shavings and a very smooth surface. Or, at least that's my experience.

Barry

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. The poster child is a pear wood kaleidoscope hanging from a walnut stand. You'll find a fuller set of pics in the "Adult Toys" section. I turned at the boundary between sap and heartwood and found very nice shadings. Not sure if it's a Bradford pear or not, but the logs were distinctly darker in the center, (Search in Google Earth for 12500 West Outer Dr., Detroit, MI to see the tree while still standing. It's the one off by itself on the right near the road. You can angle Google Earth enough to maybe be able to make a better identification of the exact species.)

Bill

That doesn't look like Bradford Pear. I will try to put a picture of a bradford pear bowl on ABPW today if I can get to it.

My woodturning club (Alabama Woodturners) got a load of Bradford Pear when one of the suburbs of Birmingham decided to remove the Bradford Pears from the median of US 31 as it goes through their town. I got in on the end of the pile and got two pieces. One I split down the middle and got two shallow bowls out of. The other was an odd piece. Picture a tree that has been pruned to a single trunk to height of about 6' and then allowed to develop a crown of branches. The piece was about 10" in diameter and so I figured I would turn a pedestal bowl (champaign bucket) from it, turning down the log. I made the end the bottom, figuring the pedestal would remove the problem areas where the branches came in. Plan worked great, besides jumping off the chuck about a half a dozen times, that is. I left the walls about 1" thick and set it aside to dry. A couple of days later I went out to the shed and "Lo and Behold!!!!" The sides of the bucket has cracked all the way through. This proves the old adage, "Woodworkers have the most unusual firewood.

The shallow bowls are fine, so far. But after about three weeks, if they were going to crack, I imagine they would have.

Deb