My town has a wood dump.  It’s tucked away between two public parks, off a back road that I’m pretty sure most people in town don’t know about.  It’s where the city workers who trim trees and pick up brush go to process what they’ve collected.  The small limbs are thrown through massive chippers, leaving mountains of mulch that other workers spread around the town’s public playgrounds.  The tree trunks and large limbs get thrown into a massive pile until they either rot away or the city workers get bored enough to cut them up.  Picture playing “Pick up Sticks” with telephone poles and you should get an idea of what the place looks like.  It’s not the safest place to hang out, but to people who work with wood, it’s a treasure trove!  On any given Saturday, if the weather is nice, someone will be there, collecting.  Sometimes it’s people fetching firewood for a cookout, sometimes it’s people wanting materials for a DIY project, and once I saw a guy with an “Alaskan sawmill” hooked up to his chain saw, cutting a 100+ year old maple tree into slabs.  The city doesn’t care, because the more the lumber bunnies cart off, the less they have to process.  For a woodturner, you never know what you’ll find.  Ash is always a glut because of the beetles that are killing all the trees and there’s always oak.  Every once in awhile, though, something different will be laying there, waiting to be saved from the chipper, which serves as bait.  I’ve seen sycamore, maples, and one lonely walnut log that I’m pretty sure the workers had set aside to come back and get after work.  (Don’t tell them, but it was me who took a chunk off the end…)

On one of my forages (at least two years ago), I saw a huge oak tree that would have taken a bulldozer to move and had several other logs laying across it.  Since I’m not real fond of turning oak, I kept scanning.  On top of the oak, was a tree that looked like maple AND it looked like it was freshly cut, so the wood should have had less checking.  As I stepped up on the oak tree to look at the maple, I saw the back side of the oak tree had several large burls that had grown out of the side of it.  JACKPOT!  Burls have THE most interesting grain of any wood, they’re hard to find, and they’re usually scooped up by the first collector on the scene.   These, though, had what I’m sure was the remains of a squirrel nest right in the middle of them.  That means water surely would have gotten into the middle of the tree and most likely rotted the burls from the inside.  I took the chain saw and tried to remove as much of the wood as I could, without causing all the logs to shift an squash me.  I ended up getting several chunks, but could tell from the dirt and rot that most of it would be unusable.  When I got home, I took the pressure washer to them to get rid of the rotten spots.  After the icky parts were removed, there was enough left for some bottle stoppers, a mini-birdhouse or two, and a couple chunks that could be turned into bowls.  I cut them into turning blanks and left them to dry.

Cleaning out the garage, I stumbled on one of them and decided to spin it up to see what I had.  When working with burls, one of three things will happen:

1. you’ll get solid wood all the way through, with really interesting grain pattern.  This is the equivalent of winning the lottery or getting a brain tumor.  Yeah, it happens, but no one really expects it to happen to them.
2. You’ll get a blank with holes, gaps, voids, rotten spots, etc. that have to be “fixed”.  This is the most common.  Some people leave them open (creating a hole in the side of the turning) and some fill them with epoxy.  I opted for the epoxy route.
3. You’ll get a piece of wood that is so unstable it will come apart at some point during the turning process.  This kind of “blowout” is potentially lethal, usually painful, and not something a rookie turner should try, even with all the proper safety equipment.

Here’s what I came up with and all I can say is WOW!!!  This is easily the prettiest thing I’ve turned in quite some time.  After sanding this thing up to 20,000 grit, it’s got a coat of Yorkshire Grit (which is an abrasive paste wax) followed by a harder wax product called Renaissance Wax (which is a petroleum based wax).  I like everything about this, from the unpredictable grain, to the epoxy fillers, to the feel of the finish.  Now, I need to go dig back through the garage and the shop, cause I’m pretty sure there’s another piece like this, somewhere…

So this one is made out of segmented wood, which kinda breaks up the vertical look a bit.  I decided to put a piece of Corian in the top, which felt like a really good idea at the time.  My thought process was that the Corian would help with some of the moisture issues that come with cancer patients who wear wigs.  After getting it done, I realized that even though I chose green Corian and not a softer pinkish color that I also have, it still makes it look very boob-like, which was NOT my intention…

The turning club that I’m in was looking for some way to blend the art/craft of woodturning with some form of charitable giving.  Other clubs are supporting a group called “beads of courage” by making boxes that are given to young cancer victims who use them to hold beads they are given with each cancer treatment.  Cool project and it helps kids, but there are many, MANY clubs doing this.  Several clubs are turning pens that are donated to a group that re-sells them and keeps the cash.  Some clubs hold auctions of donated projects and donate the cash.  We were looking for something different.  For me, I really don’t like to just give money to a group claiming they’re going to do good things with it.  That kind of group always seems to grow the administration on the payroll, first.  I was thinking something that would help people directly, without having to have someone else decide how to “spend” the donations.

What we decided on was making wig stands.  May sound weird, but in talking to the Susan G. Koman Breast Cancer Center in Peoria, il., apparently they already have programs that make or give wigs to women who have lost their hair due to cancer treatments, but they have nothing to offer the women to put their wigs on when they take them off.  Makes sense, if you think about it.  For me, it’s a way to help someone directly and all the middle man gets is the time it takes to broker the trade. I like turning. I like women. I like boobies. So, I figured I had four good reasons to get behind this cause and help out.

Most of the stands being made are “brown and round”, like a dome stuck on a stick, stuck in a circle.  Very utilitarian.  I figure as long as the person is going to have to stare at it, I might as well try to do something to make it worth looking at.  I made the top out of colored epoxy clay, so it wouldn’t be damaged by the sweat, heat and moisture that comes from the wigs. The chemo apparently does horrible things to the women, sweating profusely being one of them, so you have to be very careful with the finish that you use. I also added a little indentation in the bottom to hold ear rings, necklaces, rings, or anything else that needs to be held.

Here’s my first donation:

The sad thing about this whole project is that even though the club has already donated at least 50 wig stands in the last two months, they’re giving them to women faster than we can make them.  Way, way, way too many cancer patients out there!  Didn’t I hear a few years back about all these new treatments in mice that were eliminating tumors and new vaccines that could prevent some cancers from forming in the fist place?  What happened to all that?  I for one would like to put cancer industry out of business.  Just saying…