Crotchwood Questions

It's reaction wood immediately below or beside that you want. Too high, you get bark of unknown extent and orientation that can ruin your whole blank.

Try the page at :

for a look,and remember, you can never leave too much beneath when you're trimming forcrotch figure.

Crotch wood can produce some very interesting natural-edged bowls, which get away from the usual (sometimes tiresome) oval shape. The orientation of the turning will be dictated largely by the shape you have, and what you think you can make of it.

"Natural-edged" bowls are only oval if you cut them to be. Shorter pieces with steeper sides or shallower plates appear circular, as does one of my favorites, pieces undercut slightly to make a basket look. You can make three sides high by moving off centerline, though you may have to add a counterweight to keep it standing, and there are the branch wing things, which I like, but no one wants to buy.

Then there are the other kind of semi-natural edges where you're cutting heart up on a piece of firewood that revealed some nice spalting when split, and you leave the edge rough, or the bowl you decided could have irregular wall height and chainsaw marks on the rim ....

Hi,

Yes the crotch wood is from the crotch of a tree (where a branch is or where the tree becomes two trunks). You can either cut the crotch so that it 2 pieces that look like a Y or you can turn it 90 degrees and cut it like you're cutting the branch off the face. They both produce crotch figure, but have a different look.

The split Y cut will give you a "zipper" like look, and the other way of cutting it will give you a "fountain" like look.

Here is a picture of a cherry crotch bowl lid I turned from a 4/4 board, cut the second way.

prefer the "fountain" look of crotchwood.