Black Ash Burl Cue - from the Northern Woods to the Pool Table.

meridianblades

meridianblades

BIG SHILL
Silver Member
The burl was harvested by yours truly, and then cut / dried and sent to WSSI for professional stabilizing.

It was then sent to cuemaker Chris Drew to get what you see here in these last few pics.

My prediction is that this burl species will become one of the most rare in the world due to a little bug called the Emerald Ash Borer.

How rare is it to see a burl in the first place? How rare will it be now that 10's of millions of these trees have already been killed....

I chose this particular black ash burl because it was very unique with a color range from almost white to a very dark brown spalt.

Truly one of kind. Enjoy....


(Note - Examples of some harvested Black Ash Burl)

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meridianblades

meridianblades

BIG SHILL
Silver Member
Denny said:
That wood is absolutely gorgeous. WOW

Denny
Click to expand...

Thanks Denny..... Chris did a fabulous job of bringing it all to life. The rings have a natural colored wood which is hard to tell from my amateur pics, but it is a subtle detail that works well with the Black Ash.
 
ddadams

ddadams

Absolutely love this cue.
Silver Member
meridianblades said:

Thanks Allen I appreciate it.....

Here is another pic for reference......MOST high end Black Ash Burl looks similar to the bottom piece in this picture.....:grin:

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Click to expand...

Those are sick!

I like the top a little better though.
 
dpaulnot

dpaulnot

AzB Gold Member
Gold Member
Silver Member
Black Ash Burl

Never seen one like that, I'm a merry widow fan, and thats a crazy good lookin cue !!
 
sharond

sharond

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Thanks for the post. I love it. From the cut wood on the back of the truck to the finished cue . . . I love seeing that beautiful cue from start to finish. Amazing!
 
SCCues

SCCues

< Searing Twins
Silver Member
Your pictures from raw tree trunk to finished cue are great. Beautiful wood in a cue is beautiful and you can really appreciate some of the rare woods when you see a cue built from them.

James
 
DD Custom Cues

DD Custom Cues

Cues by Drew
Silver Member
Thank you all for your kind words. It was nice doing this build for Larry. He provided a great piece of wood to work with. Looking forward to our next build Larry to see what kind of crazy wood you send me now.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 2
 
A

AP2ez

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
That was some of the best wood porn I've seen in a while.... I want to get in the woods....and find my own personal story in a cue.... Where in this country are the best burl woods found??
 
meridianblades

meridianblades

BIG SHILL
Silver Member
AP2ez said:
That was some of the best wood porn I've seen in a while.... I want to get in the woods....and find my own personal story in a cue.... Where in this country are the best burl woods found??
Click to expand...

Thanks for the nice comments. I think it depends on where you live....The Black Ash Burl here in MN tends to grow in the swampy northern parts of the state. Lot of it is harvested during the winter time.

It was -25 with the wind chill here this morning. Good times....

Then you need to be able to cut the burl up, so you can maximize the eyes versus the flame. Horsing a 100lb wooden ball onto your bandsaw is always a treat too. Where should my first cut be? Of course eyes should be on the face and the flame (less desirable) should be on the sides. This obviously makes no difference since you're turning it round for cues, pens etc. You should obviously cut it oversized because as it dries it will more than likely move...

You should also be able to tell if a piece is too spalted (rotten) to be used or if it could still be stabilized (impregnated with acrylic) and used so you can capture the spalt.

How wet is it? Do you have a quality moisture meter? Nice Lignomat meter to measure moisture content....

The old wives tale is that for every inch of burl thickness, it takes a year of drying time......True or Untrue? Does it depend on species? Cherry burl will check and warp right before your eyes... Quick Anchor Seal? Will that stop it?

How many times have you gone into WoodCraft, Rockler, or another fine wood working store, only to find turning blanks completely dipped in wax that have cracked all the way thru the wax?

Sometimes you cut up a burl and there isn't even any eyes inside and the figure is straight grained, or its an onion burl. It kinda like Xmas morning when you think you're getting a great gift and its just a sweater.....:p

Sorry didn't mean to get off on a tangent, back to your question.

Here are some examples:
California / Oregon has great Redwood Burl, Maple Burl, Madrone Burl and others
Pennsylvania has great Cherry Burl.
Missouri has outstanding Walnut Burl

Look around where you live, and talk a walk in the woods. Maybe there are neighbors who have an old tree they are cutting down with a large burl on it. Most people don't even notice..... they cut it down and have it hauled away. Go to the dump where people get rid of grass clippings, and trees / shrubs. One of the most annoying of trees is the box elder. It attracts those bugs that crawl on the side of the house during the summer/fall, but the burl is fantastic. Even the red flame of box elder is nice looking... Hope that helps :thumbup:

 
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meridianblades

meridianblades

BIG SHILL
Silver Member
One good thing about the bitter COLD


Recent article about the COLD weather and the EAB.....


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While many of us may prefer to never again see temperatures drop below zero like they did earlier this week across the country, the deep freeze is putting warm smiles on the faces of many entomologists.

That's because it may have been cold enough in some areas to freeze and kill some damaging invasive species of insects, including the tree-killing emerald ash borer.

After their eggs are laid in the bark of ash trees during late summer, the larvae of these beetles start to bore. They feed on the conductive tissue, where water and nutrients go up and down the tree. In infested trees with multiple larvae, the small, white, worm-like creatures about half an inch long eat their way through the tree tissue in a squiggly S-shape, cutting off what are essentially the tree's arteries and starving the tree branches above.

Then, they burrow into the bark for the winter, where they are somewhat vulnerable to extreme cold.

Chopping into an ash tree with a hatchet in his frigid bare hands, entomologist Tom Tiddens peels back the bark, looking for emerald ash borer larvae. Native ash trees make up 20 percent of the forested land at the Chicago Botanic Garden, where Tiddens is supervisor of plant health care. He wants to see how this tiny but devastating insect has been faring through this week's bitter cold snap that sent temperatures to 16 degrees below zero in the Botanical Garden.

While many tree-lovers are hoping that all these beetles are freezing and dying off, "it turns out that that's not really the case," Tiddens says. "This insect, like a lot of other insects, actually has a strategy for over-wintering."

The bugs do something called "supercooling" when temperatures first begin to plummet in the fall, he explains.

"[The emerald ash borer] will cease feeding. It will stay under the bark so it's protected there. It will actually purge all the stomach contents of its gut because that could freeze," Tiddens says. "They actually fold themselves in half when they do that."

Sure enough, many of the larvae he finds after chopping and peeling back the bark are doing just that to try to stay alive.

But Tiddens and other experts say the invasive insect will die when temperatures get cold enough.

"There's no magic number in all of this," says Robert Venette, a research biologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Minnesota. "When temperatures fall to minus 20 to minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit, that's when things get interesting."

At 20 below zero, as much as half the population can die off. At 30 below, nearly all of the pests are likely to die, he explains.


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It got cold enough in parts of Minnesota to possibly wipe out up to 80 percent of the emerald ash borer population and significantly slow the advance of the invasive insect there, Venette says.

"I'm probably one of the few people that really roots for an extremely cold day because I really do think it helps with some of the major insect problems that we have," he says.

The cold may reduce the population only by 10 to 20 percent in parts of Southern Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, but Venette cautions that the cold is just a temporary setback for the beetles.

"We're simply not having the cold weather that we've had in previous years. So we can't count on the cold as being the solution to the problem," he says.

Venette and other experts say that this week's record-breaking cold might slow the spread of other invasive species, including the gypsy moth, which begin to freeze to death when temperatures fall to 17 below.

Another troublesome invasive species set back by the cold is the wooly adelgid, which has infested and killed hundreds of thousands of hemlock trees in the Northeast. It begins dying when temperatures fall just a couple of degrees below zero.

The population of some kinds of ticks, which have been advancing farther north than ever before, should be reduced by the bitter cold, too.

At the same time, many of our native species are able to withstand the bitter cold quite well. Some species that spent the winter underground are protected by the blanket of heavy snow that had fallen in many northern areas of the country before the deep freeze set in.

Greg Mueller, a biologist at the Chicago Botanic Garden, says that many beneficial insects, including pollinators such as honeybees, continue to thrive in the hive during extreme cold streaks.

"They actually kind of cluster together and form a bee ball around the queen and then vibrate their wings and that keeps the whole nest up and warm in the 90s. And so it can be howling outside, [but] if they've got the protection, if their hive was well prepared, they're going to be just fine."

If you're a gardener, tree-hugger, or just someone who wants to see flowers, trees, shrubs and crops thrive this spring, go ahead, join the entomologists in hoping for another, even colder, polar vortex to settle over the country this winter.


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