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so i am making a bass here before to long that is supposed to have a buckeye burl top on it, i got a gorgeous piece of it to work with and now i am wondering what kinda problems i am going to run into trying to work with it. it was incredibly light much to my surprise, and its becoming pretty clear that it is a pretty unstable piece of wood. i don't have a lot of experience working with highly figured woods like this and im not sure what to expect/ dont know how it will behave. got any tips that on things that i can look out for?
shad

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In my (limited) experience the issue you'll face is tearout when you're working the wood. Because the grain is in all directions, there's no good direction to cut. You will get tearout with a jointer, thicknesser, planer, chisel, plane or any direct cutting tool like that, and you will not get tearout with a bandsaw, tablesaw (as long as they are sharp) or sanding. Avoiding tearout is difficult, but even if you are sanding, you can still find that there are flaws in the surface that will never sand out. Some people fill these with CA glue, but you should ask them about that. With care a burl wood can look spectacular, and to be honest, the extra care in finishing is worth it whether you're using burl wood or not.

I hope this helps
Cheers
Ant

Buckeye burl needs to be stabilized with CA or epoxy at some point - since the grain is in all different directions, you'll have a lot of endgrain exposed all over the place. Cut only when necessary, otherwise use sanding tools to do your shaping.

If the glue surface is already nice and flat, I would glue it to the body wood first before stabilizing with CA or epoxy - otherwise stabilize first then glue. If you try to do a lot of sanding before stabilizing, then some parts will sand more quickly than others and you can develop an uneven topography pretty quickly.

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