Cutting Up and Using a Hollow Log For Woodturning Projects

As a woodturner I’m always looking for new sources of wood for woodturning as well as new ways to turn pieces of wood or logs that one might think is better suited for the burn pile!

I hear chainsaws running in the neighborhood, I hear wood chippers chopping up branches and it drives me crazy if I can’t get there to see what type of wood I might be able to snag. I see trees that are being taken down or are down laying along side the road and I want to stop at each one ….looking for those perfect bowl blanks 🙂

I even watch TV and in the scenery there are trees that are crooked and gnarly and I think …..if only I knew where that was and could get there! I guess you could say I’m a little sick….. woodturning sick that is 🙂

My son put up a pole barn and had to take down 8 giant oak trees. Although we saved a lot, much of the branches were sent to the chipper and just about anyone who stopped by and wanted a trunk could have it. He wanted his yard nice and neat and I know he thinks I’m just crazy. If I can’t turn it, I burn it 🙂

Hollow Hickory Tree for the Mill or
Cut Up into Bowl Blanks

So, he brings down a 3 or 4 long trunks, 10 or 12 feet long. They were all solid on the small end but 2 of the bigger trees were hollow at the thick end. The wide end was close to 24″ wide, I could have gotten some awesome hickory bowl blanks but over half of the diameter of the tree was rotted through. Very disappointing to see most of the tree from center out was rotten.

Still…there was some good firewood in the rotted pieces, they would be easy enough to cut and split. So I just figured it would be fire wood. Also I could use it for my smoker, hickory makes excellent wood for smoking meat!  Then a light bulb went off in my head and I had a brainstorm.

I had been Turning Spindle
Blanks into “Fishing Bats” & “Billy Clubs”

I was on a mission turning 3 to 6 inch branches into these bats along with vases, candle stick holders, tool handles and cups from what you could call spindle blanks which were for the most part branches.

Actually,  I was currently making “fish bats” from 3 to 6 inch branches. I wanted to try and sell them to a couple of the local ‘bait and tackle’ shops in my area and thought I would put a few in my online store. So I had been working with my roughing gouge for the past week making long round blanks, which you could call spindle blanks for woodturning. I wasn’t sure what to call them, I guess they are a type of spindle blank. I just turn a piece until I get all the bark, worm holes and other defects out of the blank. Then I dry them …. drying long spindle blanks. This is when I decided to build a drying cage for spindle blanks.

How To Cut Hickory Spindle Blanks

I’ll see if I can post a picture of the end of one of these hickory tree logs. Basically it is hollow but there can be anywhere from 4 to 6 inches or more of good wood around the outside of the tree. This consists of the sapwood and heartwood in almost equal amounts.

So…. if you were able to harvest the first 6 to 8″ of the outside of the tree you would have 2 colors, the light sapwood and the dark heartwood. Could make some interesting projects. However in this tree there really wasn’t enough to get a decent bowl blank out of for woodturning.

Cut Sections With The Grain Out of The 24″ Log

Hickory is very hard. If you try to turn it dry its like turning concrete. These trees were very wet getting ready for spring growth so they were filled with water and nutrients.

I thought why not take my 24″ log I just cut and slice it down the length into sections that I could make some wide spindle blanks? I’ve never run across anyone discussing or showing how you can dissect a tree like this for woodturning blanks. You could cut a 6″ x 6″ x 24″ spindle blank if you wanted to turn a vase. I cut a couple 4″x 4″x 24″ slices for my “billy clubs” and “fish bats” and they worked perfectly.

Since they were kind of square and had some rotted material on one side I took them to the band saw and knocked off the edges with a jig I made and cut the rotted material off. I also knocked off the corners of the long hickory spindle blank. Turning a square into a octagon shaped piece really made it easy to turn. Hickory is dense and even when wet it was pretty hard.

Since Hickory has a very light colored, almost white, sapwood, and the heartwood is dark brown there were some interesting pieces. I actually turned a couple of blanks for some new tools I wanted with big….long handles. I was going to use oak but now I think I will do a couple with these hickory spindle blanks.

Can Woodturners Use
Rotted Hollow Trees?

I made this post because I wanted to share a new source of wood for woodturning that I discovered. I can’t tell you how many times I walked away from trees that I thought were too rotted and would not yield any wood for wood turning.

I could probably get 2000 or more pen blanks with nice color and grain from these rotted trees…..and that doesn’t mean the blanks would be rotted. As I said, I normally would have cut up the rotted stuff and used it for fire wood.

So next time you run across a tree with a rotted center start to think how you might be able to harvest wood for projects that would go with the the grain instead of across the grain. You could make rolling pins, bowling balls, vases, cups and more cups, bats, light sabers, billy clubs, tire thumpers and fish bats ….you get the idea.

Now I look at rotted trees with a new perspective. It is actually easier to harvest on of these logs because you can cut 24″, maybe 36″ or more off of the dead tree. Then split that piece in half with the grain, maybe split those in half again with the grain and load them easily in your truck or car ….get them home and further process them on your bandsaw or finsih with the chainsaw.

Take What You Can Get

I do not do a lot of spindle turning or end grain turning.

I like to turn wood bowls.

That said, if you are like me you probably have ignored the tree trunk with a big hole going down the center. I hope now if you’ve read this you might look at that rotted tree trunk laying there as a gift 🙂 There is so much you can pull out of the first 4 to 6 inches of the outside of a tree that is really is worth your effort to harvest some of that and dry it.

Collecting Wood for Woodturning ….
How to Use and Turn a Hollow Log

Keep in mind, you might find a tree that has at least 12″ of good material around the outside but because of the way it is laying or looks you think the wood isn’t worth harvesting for your woodturning needs. You are wrong, I have 2 or 3 oak trees that are at least 36 inches in diameter and as they lay on the ground rotted and hollowed out in the center there is more than 12″ of solid wood that can be cut for either spindle blanks or bowl blanks that can be used for your woodturning addiction.

And ….. often times the lower part of the tree has a good amount of disfigurement, that is burls, crotches and other deviations that give those turning blanks character that you won’t find anywhere else.

I hope you have at least realized that there is another way to look at trees that can be used for our woodturing habit. A rotten tree may be a liability to a homeowner, it just might be a dead tree in a forest but to you, a wood turner, you can slice and dice your way to harvesting some awesome woodturning blanks 🙂