Dead or Alive

Both if you like Oak.

Hi James,

I live in Austin, TX. Many turners here reject oak. Red oak is mostly reviled because it tends to chip. White oak is used a bit more. But in general, Texas oak would rather crack and split than become a bowl :-)

If you process it into turnings here is what I have found.

1) Cut and process the wood while green as much as possible. Cut it into bowl blanks as soon as possible and seal any visible end grain. Either cut the pith out with the chainsaw or remove it when you rough your bowls. The pith in oak will crack your bowls in almost every case. 2) Rough turn the wood as soon as possible and seal end grain. I use AnchorSeal. You can get it from WoodCraft or directly from the NY manufacturer. 3) You can turn to final thin thickness now. Or you can process it in about a year. Most of the stuff I process after the one year wait. I found that some roughed out blanks soak up AnchorSeal and started cracking - so I applied more on those items.

If you have an 80 foot tree, you will have your hands full. That will generate a lot of bowls. Here are pics of a smaller oak that I processed earlier this year. 90% was processed into bowls. The rest became mushrooms, spheres, etc. Look at rough cut oak link:

cutting, Jeff Jilg Austin, TX

Yes.

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