An American Elm in Carolina

On the lawn between Phillips and Peabody hall is a giant American Elm. This beautiful tree was most likely planted when the buildings where completed around 90 years ago, and it has dominated the landscape as long as I've been at Carolina. Students would climb it, teachers would hold class under it and people would sit on the stone wall eating their lunch in its shade. Besides the size of the tree, one of its most defining characteristics were the large burl knots that covered it.

Having walked past this tree almost daily for the past ten years I was stunned when our department got an email from the university arborist informing us that the tree was dying and had to be taken down. It had been infested by borers and while attempts had been made to quell the menace over the past few years the bugs had won.

I would be lying if I told you I had thought anything was wrong with the tree. Familiarity had made me blind to the signs of sickness the tree was showing this year. When I went out to look at it many of the top branches were bare and the leaves that remained looked pale and withered. Bees flew all around and crawled all over the tree. In my imagination vast networks of honeycomb lay underneath the bark. When I talked to the arborist the following week as the tree was being cut down I asked him if bees were responsible for the damage. It turns out they were more like fuzzy little hyenas nibbling on a corpse. The bore holes left by the real perpetrators would weep sap, and in the absence of many blooming flowers this late in the summer, the bees would harvest the sugar.

Of course with the tree going to be turned into mulch, I wasn't going to be any less of an opportunist than the bees. Remember those burl knots I mentioned? Burls are the giant nodule growths you see on the sides of trees and are formed at sites of various types of injury. This injury causes the grain to grow in an irregular pattern. Burls are prized for their unique figure and their rarity. And this tree was covered in them.

Since the tree was so distinct it has been featured in many pictures of the campus and in 2010 it was part of the "Noble Trees, Traveled Paths: The Carolina Landscape Since 1793" collection shown at Wilson Library. The burls were removed from the tree before it was to be cut down, with some of them sent to be exhibited in the library. The others were set aside and allowed to be claimed by interested parties.

While it is a shame that most of the tree will be reduced to mulch, at least some of it will be preserved. Matt and I are excited to make some beautiful pieces from this tree and plan on gifting some of our work to the department it stood by for 90 years. So come on back and see what we come up with.

Segmented Travel Mug for Jeanne

One of the reasons I began wood turning was the idea that I'd never have to buy my loved ones a Christmas present again. Now, I'm not saying I didn't plan on ever buying a gift again. And I'm not even saying it was one of the top three reasons. But the idea was appealing.

Two weeks before Christmas and nine projects behind schedule that dream died. I had grand plans. Wonderful notions. All I was lacking was time and experience.

One project in particular was a present for my girlfriend. She loves coffee, so when I saw Woodcraft's Travel Mug kit I knew it would be the prefect present. The kit is very simple; you get the inner liner and the cap that goes on top. A wooden body is turned and glued up under the lip.

But I didn't want to do just a plain simple body. I wanted to do something she would fall head over heels for. I was going to do a segmented mug. Eight bands of Purpleheart, Paduak, Maple and Walnut. The four made up a color palette that I knew she'd love.

Segmented turning is when you glue up multiple pieces of wood into a blank, giving your final project a particular pattern or color scheme. For this particular mug I cut the above mentioned wood pack into eight staves. These are long trapezoid pieces, that when stacked together make a cylinder. I then turned a base with a tenon to hold the mug when turning. My glue up gave me a 10" long cylinder which I chopped down to about 7" and then attached it to the tenon base.

The next day I set my lovely blank onto the lathe and began my turning. To add stability I turned a cone piece that was pressed into the top of the mug with the tail stock. I was quit pleased with myself, and making good time with turning the mug down to size, when I started to hear a flapping sound. To my dismay I had begun to turn through the bottom of the mug.

Not a major problem. I would just part off the top of the cylinder, glue it on to the base and add an inch thick lip of mahogany to the top. But the piece decided it would rather jump of my lathe.

Left with just my original mahogany base and a dejected spirit, I packed it in for the night. The next day, with some extra mahogany from fellow Quantum Woodworker Matt, I came up with a new design. I drilled a 1/4" hold slightly into the base of the mug. I then turned two pieces of mahogany into 4" diameter x 2" thick disks. In the center of the disks I again drilled a 1/4" hole, but this time all the way through. This allowed me to align each piece with a dowel, keeping everything centered for gluing up. I then stacked one disk on the base, the remaining 3" of glued up cylinder, and the final disk.

I was much more careful this time. Since the top piece was a solid disk with only the 1/4" hole I was easily able to support the mug with a cone center. The outer diameter was turned down to about 1/4" over-sized first in order to lower the weight of the piece when I turned down the inside diameter.

When I had the piece turned down to the proper size I sanded to 400 grit. Over the next week I applied several coats of a clear polyurethane finish lightly sanding with a 400 grit in between each.

Before finish:

After finish:

While it was a frustrating beginning, I'm ultimately much happier with the final style, the bands are much more balanced with a top and bottom of mahogany. More importantly, however, Jeanne absolutely loved it.