It's a Burl - A photo tour of where I work

Joined
Dec 7, 2008
Messages
7,187
The place where I work is called It's a Burl. It's kind of an unusual place as you will see from the photos. Mostly what we do here is make burl furniture and other items for our galleries. We also sell a lot of wood to crafts people as well as resellers. Myself, I primarily prepare and sell wood online and sometimes make stuff for our galleries.

It is a pretty easy going place. Our boss lets us work when we want. He figures if we set our own schedules we will do better work. There are several people that work here making furniture and other unusual stuff. Some of these people have really active imaginations. Summertime we get to work outdoors. One of the workshops is up in one of the trees.

People tease us sometimes saying that we are an unusual place, with unusual people making unusual things from unusual wood. I'll leave it up to you to form your own opinion.

iab001.jpg

There are lots of tree houses around the place. This first one is a work shop during the summer. Nice and shady with a good breeze. They use the forklift to get things down when a piece is completed.
iab003.jpg

iab004.jpg

This one is a 3 story tree house.
iab005.jpg

The old tow truck was used for moving big burls around before it was retired.
iab008.jpg
 
Last edited:
As you can probably tell, I am just wondering around the place with my camera. It's not a fancy place, but it is kind of fun here.
iab009.jpg

One of the guys that used to work here liked to carve carousel horses and stuff like that. Now he's famous and carving stuff in Mexico for the rich tourists.
iab010.jpg

Kentucky Fried Chicken's Corp office threatened a lawsuit over the guy in the striped coat back when he was holding a rubber chicken instead of the sign.
iab011.jpg

iab012.jpg

iab013.jpg

The guy in the overalls is my boss Harvey. He's 76 years old but outworks most of the people here.
iab014.jpg

iab015.jpg

This is JD. She makes cool furniture and is one of our best bowl carvers.
iab016.jpg
 
Last edited:
Here are some more photos of the outdoors portion of our place.
Washing a burl.
iab017.jpg

Some caps in the burl barn.
iab018.jpg

iab019.jpg

The outside of the burl barn.
iab020.jpg

More wood
iab021.jpg

Lots of unusual stuff around the place.
iab022.jpg

Now some photos inside the galleries
iab023.jpg

iab024.jpg
 
Last edited:
More photos inside the gallery.
iab025.jpg

iab026.jpg

iab027.jpg

The guy who does the carving here is pretty good.
iab028.jpg

Now back outside to head over to the other gallery.
iab029.jpg

We make a lot of porch swings this time of the year.
iab030.jpg

This is Jeff. He does pottery here a few days out of the week.
iab031.jpg

iab032.jpg
 
iab033.jpg

Kids really like the place too.
iab034.jpg

An old 3 wheeler tractor.
iab035.jpg


If you are ever in SW Oregon you should stop by.
 
Last edited:
Great pics ! I would love to visit that place one day. Man do I adore Oregon. :)


Tostig
 
Several of the forum members have been out to our place. It's kind of fun to just wonder around. Especially when the weather is good. Last year Subaru came out and filmed on of their commercials here. If you come out just be sure to allow at least half a day to spend here.
 
Awesome pics, and thanks for sharing. Looks like a pretty sweet place to work. Wonderful wood as well. Keep them coming! :thumbup:
 
Hey BurlSource. Very cool pics.! I lived in Idaho for 6 years, and in my backyard was.. Just about the most burlwood I have ever seen!!!! I had so much of it, I made tables, chairs, endtables, clocks, lamps, well you name it. Cool thing was that 90% of it was knive handle quality!!! so that made alot of great furniture and a bunch of other things my brain cooked up. I still have 4-500 lbs. of most of the real wild stuff for knives, but I am still tryin to figure out how to hardin or stablize it (then it really looks cool) I guess there is just a bunch of great burls in Oregon & Idaho.!! Looked in both states (Oregon was right across the Snake River that was in my backyard. Well 75 yards away from the back of my house.) Well you have yourself a great one, and thanks for the pics. (I guess I should post some of my own soon) Enjoy. Edgy
 
those chairs and benches are awesome :D

I was thinking the same thing. Very cool looking place pretty sure most of us addicts would get all giddy being around all that wood. If there would be an easy and cheap way to get some of that stuff across country I'd probably refurnish rooms as I needed it with whatever you guys have there. Wife loves that kind of stuff too.
 
Cool, cool, cool!

I love stopping in to places like those. SO many creative minds in one place.

BTW. how much would a chair like the one 3 pictures up on the right be? I'm sure it is out of my current range but have to ask.
 
Very cool. Looks like a lot of fun.
How close to the California are you? My sister lives real close to it and one of these days I will make it over there and would love to see the place in person.
 
Back
Top