AWGB Woodturning Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Twisted Trees on January 09, 2020, 11:29:41 AM
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Gone awfully quiet in here,
Does anyone have a photo of a piece of turned horse chestnut? preferably an endgrain and side grain view. Reason is I have 4 big pieces from a tree taken down in a local graveyard and want to pre-process it but have never worked it before, so could use some clues before I set the chainsaw on it.
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The first is a pic of a medium sized hollow form made from horse chestnut, with a very distinct separation of the heartwood vs. sapwood.
The second is from the same tree, this time a shallow bowl, about 8" diameter. After rough turning a part of the rim fell off (fault in the timber). I cleaned it up and glued it back on with epoxy, now it's barely visible.
Horse chestnut is quite soft, and the tree that I harvested had severe decay in it, accounting for the large contrast in coloration, however this has also caused large areas with faults, so this may well affect your wood too.
Apologies for the low quality, these were meant for personal documentation rather than publication.
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Thank you, that actually helps a lot, currently it is all so fresh cut it is just orange throughout, I will definitely try to cut it to include heartwood / sapwood separation, the contrast is stunning but not visible yet in my timber! will hope to achieve something similar to yours in a year or three.
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If your tree was young or healthy, then most likely it will be mostly sapwood, with little heartwood. You would have seen the colour separation clearly when cutting it. To test this, use a hand plane and shave the orange discoloration off, it will be quite shallow, and you will see what you have.
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The tree was over 200 years old, I didn't fell it, just collected some pieces of trunk. Have taken a few slices now and can see better what I have to play with. It should be good.
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These are a couple of bits I've turned from Horse Chestnut
The platter/bowl is around 24" diameter turned 5 years ago
Hollow form was around 10" tall turned a couple of years ago
Coloured hollow form 5" tall turned last year
Lovely wood to work with one of my favorites.
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Thank you, I have it mostly sliced up and rough turned / cored out for a number of bowls and some 4"x4" as well as a few odd shapes all stacked and waiting to dry now. Completely filled my garden waste bin with wet shavings in the process! I am looking forward to turning it in the future.