When the city has to cut down trees the dump them on a lot, free for the taking. I drove by on Thursday and noticed they brought in a a big silver maple tree. I wasn’t able to get there until today and the firewood folks had already cleaned out the easy pickings but I did find this large hunk, made me wish I had a bigger chain saw then my little 18” but I managed to cut from both sides and pick up some pieces. Didn’t take many pictures. It’s very wet but the plan is to rough them out, coat the end grain with anchor seal till they dry out. 
all in all a good score for me. 

Gonna be some awesome bowls!

What you have is a crotch. If you cut across those two trunks . That is cut horizontally in the picture . It would probably have some nice figure in there somewhere.

Got a chance to put that big hunk of maple on the lathe yesterday. I Han planned to take more pictures but with the intimidation or nervousness and a little excitement I only got these 3.  This is by far the heaviest piece I’ve done. 
for me it was too big and heavy to safely balance on my bandsaw so I “rounded” it with the chainsaw. 
it was so out of balance I started turning at 175 rpm’s. I was very excited to find all the marking inside this wood. I think it’s going to be a beautiful piece. I don’t know how accurate my moisture meter is but it says it’s 60% water, as heavy as it is I have a tendency to believing it. 
Another bit of surprise to me is the dark half (which has some crotch grain) is heavier so even being round it was slow going. 
I now have the end grain coated with Anchor Seal and it will rest through the winter. 

2 minutes ago, Gordon said:

Got a chance to put that big hunk of maple on the lathe yesterday. I Han planned to take more pictures but with the intimidation or nervousness and a little excitement I only got these 3.  This is by far the heaviest piece I’ve done. 
for me it was too big and heavy to safely balance on my bandsaw so I “rounded” it with the chainsaw. 
it was so out of balance I started turning at 175 rpm’s. I was very excited to find all the marking inside this wood. I think it’s going to be a beautiful piece. I don’t know how accurate my moisture meter is but it says it’s 60% water, as heavy as it is I have a tendency to believing it. 
Another bit of surprise to me is the dark half (which has some crotch grain) is heavier so even being round it was slow going. 
I now have the end grain coated with Anchor Seal and it will rest through the winter. 

 

That's gonna be a pretty bowl!!

Indeed, there's a lot of character in that piece!

The grain and color contrast is amazing. Looking forward to seeing this again in the spring.

+1 with all the above, that should finish really nice.