What to make from birch burl. Kap ("witch's broom") and Suvel ("sville"). Differences and similarities. Video: birch growths - cap and suvel

The cap is also called the "witch's broom" - this is a small formation on a tree, of a benign nature. Basically, it looks like a drop, from which thin branches grow, gathering into a bundle. In the section across, you can see the structure of catchy knots. Processing cap is not easy, although grinding and polishing still lends itself. As a result, the work has a very attractive appearance.

Some areas of the birch burl may give off mother-of-pearl. In industry, it is not of particular value, but is quite expensive due to its beauty and uniqueness.

Burl can sometimes be used as furniture veneer, but most often it is exotic wood burl. But from a birch burl they make beautiful caskets, women's small jewelry or hairpins, cigarette cases.

The birch burl has a high-quality texture, so a knife with a wooden handle is very beautiful and expensive.

Two identical caps cannot be found in nature, even the halves differ from each other. They can be seen in many different trees. In our latitudes it is very much appreciated birch burl. It does not grow large, the maximum diameter is like that of a large plate.

Due to the dense texture, it is difficult to make any drawing on the cap, and it makes no sense.

In order for the birch burl to be used for its intended purpose in the future, it is very important to assemble it correctly. To do this, we will acquaint you with detailed instructions:

Proper processing of birch burl

Very often, when sawing a cap, a unique and inimitable pattern is formed that the master does not want to change. In other cases, the cap after sawing is processed:

• Large caps are almost always sawn, as several items can be made from it at once. The cap is divided into several plates, the thickness of each depends on what item is planned to be made.
• In order to get an excellent drawing in the future, you should think over the cutting angle in advance. The more sleepers on the cut, the better.
• When the burl is fresh, the pattern is weak, but sawing is much easier.
• That the drawing manifested itself in full beauty, before making the item, the cap should be steamed well.
• You can steam the cap at home, fine sawdust is suitable for this. To carry out the procedure, they take a container of the right size (it is recommended to use an old pan, since the dyes that will appear cannot be washed off). Sawdust is laid out in a generous layer on the bottom, a cap is placed on top. It is impossible to lay tightly, there should be a gap of at least 0.5 centimeters. Sawdust is sprinkled on top in a thin layer.
• The laid cap is poured into a saucepan with well-salted water (mostly bottom layer). Water should not completely cover the workpieces, but only touch them a little. Salt is taken with the calculation of 1 tbsp. l. for 1 liter of water. If there is a little more - it does not matter.
• The prepared cap is covered with a lid and put on a small fire. As soon as the mixture boils, they tell off about 10 hours, and let the cap steam well. To avoid trouble, they look into the container every hour, if necessary, add water.
• At the end of the day, the container is removed from the fire and left to cool.
• After cooling, the blanks are washed under running water and left to dry. Turn them over every few hours to dry evenly. The drying period lasts about 3-4 days.
• When the blanks are completely dry, they are again steamed according to the above scheme, dried again. The procedure is repeated up to three times.
• If, after steaming, the bark has not completely fallen off, it is carefully removed by hand.
• The drying procedure is preferably carried out on the street. The first day is turned over quite often, on the third day 1-2 times is enough.
• It is great if it is possible to carry out the final drying in a special oven several times.
• If the cap is very large (larger than a basketball), this type of processing will not work. The drying or steaming process can cause cracks and other damage.
• Boil as basically cut into parts. Whole growths on a birch are processed as common tree- by sanding and varnishing.
• When evaporating, the burl plates acquire the shade of the emitted components, it can be very diverse (yellow with a golden tint, brown, etc.).
• After processing, subsequent procedures can be carried out, for example, varnishing or painting.
• Before varnishing, the surface is well polished with coarse emery, then fine. Wood dust can be wiped off with a soft cloth.
• The drawing will appear in all its glory if the cap is treated with wax.

In fact, working with a burl is very painstaking, it requires attention and a lot of time. But what is obtained as a result of labor is certainly pleasing. Birch burl makes excellent souvenirs that have an individual and unique pattern.

Sometimes painful growths appear on the trees, which are popularly called "witch's broom." At first glance, this benign formation in its form resembles human head. That is why it is generally accepted that the name of the growth comes from the ancient Slavic word "cap". It means "head" in translation.

Where can you find growths on trees

Cap is found on walnuts and on oaks, on aspens, and however, the most common outgrowth is on birch. Cap is a bundle of thin twigs that grow from a drop-shaped neoplasm. Weigh "witch broom" can be about a ton.

stem? This is a growth that is located directly on the trunk of a tree. What is a kapokoren? This is a growth that has formed at the very root neck of the tree. Sometimes it can be seen above earth's surface. An underground burl grows on the roots. He is found on the run. Releases their cap in early spring. These shoots are not viable and quickly wither. Sometimes burl is found on tree branches.

The beauty of amazing material

If you make a cross section of the burl, you can find its structure, in which the cores of the knots are pronounced. The drawing of such material is always very beautiful. Due to the accumulation of unblown buds, the cut is an amazingly beautiful picture of knots, curls and twisted fibers. At the same time, the pattern for each cap is strictly individual.

The burl formed on trees with a striped texture of fibers and contrasting color combinations is distinguished by its special beauty. Pine growths have such characteristics. However, they are quite rare on these trees.

You can find black dots in the texture of the kapokorn. They are located among the light stem fibers. These black dots are nothing more than non-viable shoots that release underground neoplasms.

Where is cap applied?

As a material for carving, the build-up on the tree is not of particular value. Its rugged surface and striped mottled texture interfere with each other. When making crafts in this way, the relief of the carving does not look and the pattern of weaves and stains disappears.

Numerous areas of the burl have a mother-of-pearl tint. That is why this material, which has no special industrial significance, is valued very dearly. Cap products are mainly boxes and women's hairpins, cigarette cases and various small jewelry, bowls and chess and powder boxes, ink devices and The material is also used for the manufacture of knife handles.

What is cap in industry? This is a material that is used in the decoration of furniture. In this case, the growths formed on exotic trees are taken and used as veneer.

What is a cap for a master? It is a material that does not warp, crack, shrink or swell and is excellently processed. In addition, it is heavy and durable.

Where to find cap?

Growths grow on trees. Therefore, it is necessary to look for them in the forest. However, it is not so easy, because caps grow spontaneously, and only the most stubborn and big-eyed can see them. You can cut off the build-up only with a very sharply sharpened saw.
It is most realistic to find a cap at logging sites. There, these growths fall into the waste. At logging sites, there are also kapokorni, which you simply cannot find in the forest.

Preparation of material for work

Cap can be found on various types of trees. However, the most beautiful and valuable in our area is the growth that has arisen on a birch.

Cap products are not obtained immediately. The material requires some preliminary preparation. How to process birch burl? To do this, you need to use the steaming method. It is suitable for those growths that are not very large in size. The cap is cleared of debris, placed in an unnecessary pan and filled with water. Then salt must be added to the container. For a liter of water, its dosage is two tablespoons with a top. Salt can be poured and more. She will draw the juice from the tree. With this method, sawdust obtained during the processing of resinous wood species is also used. They need to be put into a bowl. The sawdust gives the burl a pleasant color that can range from yellowish-pink to brownish-buff. The resins found in the sawdust will add strength to the build-up and allow the texture to show up brighter.

After boiling water, the fire should be slightly reduced and the pan left on the stove for six to eight hours. As scale builds up, it should be removed. In the process of steaming, it is necessary to monitor the volume of water in the pan and periodically add it.

At the end of the “cooking”, the build-up is washed from sawdust under running water and placed in a closet for a day or two. After that, the whole process should be repeated at least two to four times. During the last cooking, while the tree has not cooled down, you should peel off the bark from it, and at the end put the growth in a closet for one to two weeks.

Having completely dried out, the cap in its characteristics will become similar to the bone. The material prepared in this way is excellently cut, sawn and polished. At the same time, it will not have any foreign odors.

Making caskets

Crafts made from birch burl in their beauty are not inferior to souvenirs made of wood and even surpass them. Often magnificent caskets are made from this material.

In the process of work, the burl boards are carefully connected to each other, making sure that their texture pattern is similar. A very responsible operation is the manufacture of wooden hinges. This stage requires precise formation of rounded spikes and grooves on the edges of the cover and body of the product. The hinges must fit snugly and accurately. Another difficult operation is drilling holes. In wooden hinges, this is easiest to do with thin steel wire. At the next stage, a lock crashes into the box. The product is almost ready. It should only be puttied, dried thoroughly and coated with alkaline varnish. After completion of these works, the box is treated with polish and wiped with alcohol. The product is polished until the wood acquires and all the veins of its amazing texture play brightly.

cane decoration

Using a cap, you can make a great gift for an elderly person with your own hands. The work can be done even by a novice. Hollow cylinders should be alternately put on a tube or a metal rod, which are previously machined from birch kapokorn. Details should be tightly fitted to each other, creating the impression of a single whole. A carved or smooth birch handle can crown such a cane.

Burl bowl

Various souvenirs can be made from wooden growths. Popular burl products are decorative bowls. A rough blank is made from a little raw material. Next, the blank is left to dry. If small cracks form in it, then they are lubricated with PVA glue. After the final drying, the product is given the necessary shape, it is ground, polished and varnished.

Burl wood is a rare, natural material that develops in the form of outgrowths on the branches, trunks and roots of individual trees, mainly deciduous species: oak, walnut, maple, poplar, but most often - birch. Caps are places of growth of closely spaced adnexal and dormant buds.

The most rare, beautiful, durable and, accordingly, the most valuable is the branch burl, which has a small size (up to 15 cm in diameter) and a needle-like structure. The most common, less dense and less valuable is the root burl - kapokoren, which can reach gigantic (up to 1.5 ... 2 m in diameter) sizes. The stem cap occupies an intermediate position between the above varieties.

For a long time it was believed that burl is a painful growth on a tree, arising from the “clamping” of the buds by sudden and prolonged spring colds, which sometimes occur during the growing season of the plant.

The appearance of outgrowths was also associated with external damage to the cortex at the site of one of the dormant buds, where the excess influx of juices is directed, contributing to their multiple multiplication.

However, scientists came to the conclusion that cap is a biologically normal, protective phenomenon. Burl birch is the most valuable variety of Russian downy birch and burl formation on it is a naturally inherited process.

As a result of observations, it was found that the health of such a tree is better than that of others, it is more viable during the spring flood and frequent changes in temperature, and is more stable in the wind.

A real burl, which has an uneven surface under the bark in the form of tubercles, papillae or needles, should be distinguished from an influx (suvel) caused by local deformation of the annual layers of wood. Such influxes have an increased density and an interesting, albeit less spectacular, pattern.

The burl has a significantly (50...70%) denser than the mother wood with a wavy, multidirectional fiber structure, which, in combination with a large number of the above-mentioned buds, form an absolutely unique cut pattern.

A unique combination of properties of burl wood:

The limited natural resources, combined with the above properties, puts this material on top of the value among other types of wood, with all the species diversity. flora our planet.

According to some estimates, 1 tree with a burl accounts for, on average, 3000-5000 ordinary trees without a burl.

Due to the high value of the material, since 1959, the Central Research Institute of Forest Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which developed the technology for sowing and growing burl birches, has been studying the biology of burl and methods of growing it. A whole grove of such birches was planted in the suburbs. Since 1967, burl birch has been planted in several forestries of the Kirov region.

For the unique beauty of cap is called wooden malachite!

In general, the smaller the pattern and the larger the cap size, the more expensive it is.

The value of this unique material speaks historical fact, given in the book “burl box” (author Nadezhda Perminova): “... in 1837, for a growth of a cap of twenty pounds (a little more than 8 kg), they paid up to fifty rubles, ...., a thoroughbred bull at an agricultural exhibition was estimated at the same amount.”

Today, on the world market, the price of burl wood (solid and veneer) is several times higher than the price of any other, including: oak, elm, walnut, mahogany and any exotic species.

The unique combination of material properties, limited stocks and the uniqueness of the burl pattern in each product, ultimately, determined the generally recognized, high aesthetic value and corresponding consumer price of products made from this wood, which is used in the decoration of the most luxurious interiors, as well as in the manufacture of appropriate level of utilitarian items.

Each such product initially contains spirit of elitism.

(Based on the book "Kapovaya casket" by N.I. Perminova, the city of Gorky, Volga-Vyatka book edition, 1984)

The growths on trees have been used to make household utensils since time immemorial. Craftsmen appreciated and appreciate them for the natural beauty of the texture and durability. The well-known historian N. I. Kostomarov wrote: “Just like food utensils - bowls, torels, solonitsa, and drinking vessels - brothers, ladles, corts were made of wood in different places in the villages and were sold in the markets... These wooden products were decorated with carvings, which have long been a favorite decoration of things for a poor class. The nobles did not disdain wooden utensils, and burl vessels were used by the boyars and even by the kings and were considered a luxury. Traditional craft does not lose its significance today. He is especially revered northern peoples, in particular, the craftsmen of the Komi Republic. In Syktyvkar, in 1993, the Union of Masters of Traditional Folk Crafts and Artistic Crafts was formed. It brought together professional artists and masters of decorative and applied arts, who are fluent in the technique of artistic processing of wood, burl and birch bark, bone, stone, leather and fur. How does wood in the form of a build-up turn into an elegant product? With this question, the editors turned to a professional wood carver, a member of the Union of Masters of the Republic of Komi, Vasily Vasilyevich POPOV (Syktyvkar).

A growth is a sharp thickening of wood on a tree trunk, its branches or roots. It consists of incorrectly located, as if entangled fibers. Wood with such a defect is said to be curly. It is difficult to process it with an ax and a planer. But it has its advantages: increased resistance to splitting and a unique, bizarre texture.

Most often, growths form when a tree receives an injury of a mechanical or biological origin.

There are more valuable outgrowths, such as burl, with a refined, original texture, and less valuable ones - streak - they have a poorer pattern of fiber arrangement than that of burl.

The technology for manufacturing products from burl and svit is quite laborious and requires perseverance. Deciding the composition of the future product, the carver determines what the main tone should be. Depending on this, he chooses the type and color of wood. Each type of wood has many shades.

To depict an animal, an animal carver must know its habits, movements, anatomy well, must be able to sketch the characteristic poses of this animal and then choose the most accurate and expressive one.

When the goal is clear, the work is argued.

It is better to remove the build-up with a part of the stem wood. It is better to do this in logging.

The freshly sawn outgrowth is first cleaned of the bark, then hollowed out with semicircular chisels and cranberries. In places of transition of the growth to the trunk, handles are cut out in the form of the head and tail of a bird, or a sculpture of an animal, or a whole composition. But all this should be linked with the bowl or box into a single whole. Then the artistic product will have clear, finished forms and have dynamic movement.

When the workpiece dries, it is finally processed: the walls of the vessel are depawed thinner, the lines are brought to perfection.

To better bring out the texture of wood, to present the beauty of the material, a good finish is required. Grinding is carried out first with coarse, then with medium, and finally with the finest sandpaper (or cloth). The internal cavities are polished with a “fungus” type device, the outer cavities are ground with a similar “fungus”, but flat, roughly. Shaped parts - a shaped bar having a counter-profile of the part. The bottom of such a shaped bar, like the bottom of the "fungus", is covered with sandpaper. The final grinding at this stage is carried out with a piece of porous rubber.

Then the product is dipped in water so that the pile rises, dried and again sanded with fine sandpaper.

The next process is tinting with a stain. The depth of tone is made such that in no case does it destroy the pattern of the texture. The color of the stain is selected on a piece of wood of a similar shade and density or on waste from this product.

After drying, the product is slightly polished with worn sandpaper, and the most fine-grained.

The last process is waxing. The product is rubbed with a cloth moistened with natural drying oil or vegetable oil. Excess oil is wiped off with a dry cloth. Then the product is dried for at least a day. This operation is repeated several times - until a soft matte sheen appears.

It may seem that everything is quite simple, but there are some little secrets. To become a professional carver, you need to have a delicate taste, a sense of dynamics, plasticity of form and great patience. If you have all this, then for sure you will not spoil what nature has grown for decades.

The art products from burl and svit presented in the illustrations were made by professional wood carvers from the Union of Masters of Traditional Folk Crafts and Artistic Crafts of the Komi Republic.

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15.05.2017

The tree is the most common plant on earth.

Nature is incredibly generous, since it gave a person not only the opportunity to admire the beauty of trunks and leaves, but also to extract practical benefits from wood, because for several thousand years people have been using wooden products in their everyday life, building houses, boats, making furniture and household utensils, producing musical instruments, crafts, etc.

To date, there is no material capable of completely replacing the wonderful natural properties wood, because its density, color, texture, texture pattern and shades are unique in each case.

The natural originality of the wood pattern is especially evident in cape And suveli(ball-shaped or tear-shaped growths on trees), which pundits have identified as diseases.

These formations create a complex enchanting pattern of wood fibers inside, consisting of an interweaving of colored lines, spots, blotches, smoothly flowing into each other, which form, thus, a pattern of special beauty. Thanks to the richness of colors and lines, both burl and suvel are excellent natural material for the production of various handicrafts, decorations, interior items, since they have an exclusive texture (it is impossible to find two identical patterns in nature), and special strength and durability.

Let's try to determine how cap and suvel differ from each other, and what is common between them.

Cap

Cap ( kapokoren or as it is also popularly called witch broom”) is a rounded benign formation on a trunk or branch with a large number of woody nodules. Cap, just differs from suveli in that it has many bumps on its outer side, which are created thanks to adnexal and dormant buds. These formations look like dark spikes and tubercles, which is why, often on the cap, you can observe small shoots and twigs growing directly from it.

According to some scientists, a burl on a tree occurs as a result of either a sharp change in the development of a plant, that is, it can have both a natural and an anthropogenic cause. Some scientists believe that the appearance of an ugly tumor on a tree may be a hereditary deformity.

Burl occurs mainly on deciduous trees, such as oak, linden, maple, alder, poplar, walnut, but most often it can be found on birch.

It has been noticed that on average, for one tree with a burl, there are from three to five thousand trees without such formation, so finding a good burl (unlike suveli) is quite difficult.

Most often, a root cap is found on trees, which can be simply giant size.

Usually, kapokoren it has a softly expressed texture inside and a drawing that is weak in contrast of colors.

A burl formed on a branch often has the shape of an irregular ball and, unlike the kapokorn, when cross-sectioned, its internal texture is replete with patterns with knot cores and has a kind of “needle” structure in the form of a small ornament with dashes and dots. The internal fibers of the wood are intertwined with each other in different directions, creating a picturesque pattern, and interspersed with dormant buds make the texture even richer, so the burl is most often used as a decorative element in the manufacture of various handicrafts, knife handles, gun butts, original dishes and other souvenirs.

In processing, due to the strong density of its texture and the huge number of knots, the burl is not simple, but at the same time it is perfectly ground and polished.

The main color of the internal texture of the cap is various shades of black or brown, ocher. Even if you take two halves of the same cap, they will still be different and have a different pattern, so the structure of the build-up is heterogeneous.

The wood of the burl is stronger than that of the suveli, and fifty to seventy percent stronger than that of the tree on which it was formed.

Small items are also produced from burl: caskets, cigarette cases, hairpins, earrings, bracelets, small jewelry.

It does not make sense to create a carved pattern on the cap, since the texture and texture of wood is beautiful in itself.

Souvelle

The formation of suveli is caused by a tree disease (cancer) and it most often represents a growth twisted and woven into a ball, which is why it is also called swilem.

Typically, the swirl grows two to three times faster than the tree itself and has a teardrop or spherical shape, located around the trunk or branch. The main difference between suveli and burl is that it is formed not from dormant buds, but due to the complex interweaving of annual rings bent in different directions (hence the name svil). On this basis, the cones on the tree are easy to distinguish from each other.

Growths (especially on birch) are quite common, although the reason for its formation has not been fully studied. Presumably, a fungus or mechanical damage to the tree bark can initiate the formation of a stria.

Suvel (popularly called tree bone), since its cut resembles stains of marble (with the same overflows and radial section), and thin parts are visible through and outwardly similar to bone, although the density of tissues, as mentioned above, is less for suveli than for burl, therefore its wood is less durable.

The outgrowth of the suveli can grow to gigantic sizes (for example, in the Vatican there is a font carved from a single piece of wood). However, the finer the swirl, the richer and brighter the drawing inside, although the pattern with ornamental elements will in any case be softer (without patterns in the form of “thorns” and “needles”, which are obligatory for the burl).

The internal texture of the suvel has a delicate mother-of-pearl hue, and the colors of each can vary greatly and contain white, yellow (resembling the color of amber), as well as brown, pinkish and green colors. The shade of suveli depends on the place where the tree grows and how it is dried.

Suvel can be formed by yourself, for this it is enough to drag the trunk or branch of the tree with wire. In place of the constriction, a convex formation will soon appear, created by annual rings.

Souvelle also lends itself well to processing, well ground, polished, and its mother-of-pearl cut, reminiscent of marble, playing with stains, has a unique texture and, as it were, glows from the inside.

Undoubtedly, by the appearance of the suveli, it is possible to determine how much beautiful drawing, it is impossible, but the more clumsy and twisted the growth looks externally, the richer its texture and pattern inside will be.

The root (butt) part of the suveli is considered the most valuable. It is of interest to wood carvers, painters, knife makers, sculptors and cabinetmakers, who choose this material for its exclusivity in cut, high strength, rot resistance and unique workability.

Search and preparation of growths

Naturally, it is necessary to look for bulges on a tree in the forest. At the same time, many people confuse burl and sville with a fungus similar to them from the genus (Inonotus), which most often lives on birch and is called chaga or black birch mushroom.

It is necessary to learn to determine where the fungus is and where the growth is.

It is best to cut down the streak and burl in autumn (September-October), when the trees stop the natural movement of sap and begin preparations for winter.

It must be remembered that without a good saw, a suvel or cap, especially if they are very clumsy, is not easy to cut, so this work is best done with a chainsaw, but it must be remembered that the tool chains quickly become dull due to the special strength of the build-up.

If there is no chainsaw, you will have to work with a hand saw, but it must have sharply honed edges. a good divorce cloves so that the master does not torment himself or the tree, and in vain does not hurt him.

The place of the cut (to avoid the formation of a hollow that is undesirable for the tree) must be immediately covered with garden pitch, painted over with oil paint or covered with clay.

When a massive kapokornya, it must be remembered that its cut is fraught with serious consequences for the tree and as a result of the injury it may die.

All of the above properties and burl, and svilya elevate these unique materials to the top of value among other types of wood, since they are used both in the decoration of various utilitarian items, as well as jewelry, small plastic and dishes.