"Bjarte Runderheim" wrote in message
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"Lee" skrev i melding
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What is it .I know what birch is but flamed ? Next questions are where do
I get it, cost, does someone sell it rough cut, and what so special about
it?

Can't tell you where to get it, but it grows pretty much everrywhere
in temperate climate.

Generally there are two kinds of birch that grows really tall:
Silver birch or white birch, the tall, bautiful white birches,
swung by people like Robert Frost.

Sadly, they are nothing like bautiful in woodworking, toneless
and insignificantly patterned, and often giving a grey tone, no matter
what kind of finish you choose.

Then there is this other birch, that grows more squat and thick, altough
it
also grows as tall, or taler than the white or silver species. Its main to
characteristica (for the amateur) are the foot of the stem (which has
black
surface, more like a pine, on its lower quarter of height) and its twigs
that are hanging down, and I mean straight down, the outer half yard or
so.
Also its branches are much sturdier and thicker than those of white or
silver.

Now, it needs a certain height and thickness to develop the flame
structure.
It usually comes after the tree is full grown, and it seems to be the
sheer
weight of the top that presses and crushes the wood in the foot of the
trunk, giving the waves and firelike pattern to the wood as it continues
to grow in width.

Sadly this is also the time when this tree is beginning to develoop
a bad core, due to age, and it starts with darkening the colour
of the center of the trunk, just before it start to rot.

So, real flame birch is a little hard to come by. My neighbor cut down
some really big ones this fall, and I managed to buy off him two
rootpieces, each about 10' long and 2' to 3' in diameter.
I am really looking forward to spring, whet I get to start turning
some bowls from that wood!

We have "yellow" birch here in the US, which is prone to grain reversals
which produce the flame figure if cut properly. Sadly, I don't have any
pictures on this drive of the unspalted stuff, but you can see the curl
through the spalt in this log which was rolled for two years on the deck to
get even spalting.
http://photobucket.com/albums/d160/G...urlyYellow.jpg
It is as common a figure as its counterpart, curly maple in this area, and
runs virtually through and through. If you flat saw rather than quarter, as
here, it's more pronounced.

A look at the bark shows the thin yellow peeling surface characteristic to
the species.