Sugar Maple Hollow Form
7 inches X 5 inches
$150 plus shipping

Before I moved to Vermont from Baltimore I got a notice from my woodturning club that a man had a sugar maple which had died and had to be taken down. Club members were invited to help ourselves. As usual I did not see evidence of anyone else taking up the offer. It might have been the size.

This was a sugar maple which, lying on its size was about six feet high. Much of the wood was too far gone for turning. However, I decided to take a chance on some of it. Now, I have a large Sthil chain saw with a 24 inch bar. I made a cut from one side and then went to the other side to complete the cut. The ends didn't meet. I had to climb up on the log and make plunge cuts the depth of my bar to connect the two cuts. Then I had to make a ripping cut from the exposed end of the trunk into the area where I had made the cross cuts. Then I had to cut this big section into blocks small enough for me to carry.

As usual I took more than I had time for so it just sat in my shop. One day this piece spoke to me. It seemed sound enough to turn and turn it I did. As with far advanced spalting the wood tended to tear out and it took lots of patient sanding. To my eye it was well worth the effort. The appearance is so varied you could study it for hours and still discover patterns you had missed. The little black lines are fences the invading fungus erects to keep competing colonies of fungus out of its turf. The visual effect they leave is stunning.