# Do twiggy burls cut into decent wood?



## jeffreythree (Jan 9, 2008)

I have a cedar elm with about 12' of twiggy burls on the trunk. Anybody ever cut into burls with twigs growing from them? I was just wondering if there is any good burly wood under the bark of this tree since it may be in the way of some of my future plans.


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## Daren (Oct 14, 2006)

I have milled burl redbud that have twigs (not quite that extreme though ) growing out of them. One in particular looked like a porcupine and the twigs all have leafs on them...made very interesting wood. I would say if the twigs are alive they are just part of the wood and add more character. If they are dead and rotted then you will have voids in the burl. Another thing from my experience milling burl logs, the figure is almost always only "skin deep". It almost never goes into the trunk like we would hope. You lop the burls off and the wood below is startlingly plain compared to what you just cut off.


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## dirtclod (May 7, 2008)

There's no way of knowing without opening it up. Daren could be right about the depth. I cant tell much from the photo about the shape of the trunk itself. The tree may be experiencing simple recent epicormic budding - which can be brought on by many different stress factors such as late freezes, fire, insect or disease damage.

Some theorise that burls are a conglomeration of aborted epicormic budding caused by boilogical factors such as fungal, bacteria or viral infections, or even insect damage. No one really knows. But you could find some interesting character. How deep? Depends on how many years ago it started.


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## Kirk Allen (Nov 7, 2006)

I have only cut one Cedar Elm and it was over 40" diameter in Little Rock, AR. It was great looking wood with a nice grain pattern but even that big log yeiled a small amount of lumber because of bark inclusions throughout the log. Dont know if thats common with Cedar Elm but when in doubt, cut it out


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