Watch a Woodworker Transform a Burl Into a ‘Dragon Egg’ on the Lathe

We’ve seen some pretty neat wood carvings recently. From a mind-boggling dowel puzzle to hefty river table, woodworkers all over the world have shown there’s just as much creativity within dead trees as there are in hunks of metal.

This time around, woodworker Andy Phillip is taking wooden art for a fantastical spin. Taking the ugliest wooden burl I have ever seen to his workshop, he cuts and carves away until all that remains is a fine-looking dragon egg fit to grace any Harry Potter film.

Most of the carving takes place on a wood lathe, where Andy chips away at the hard bark with his tools. It may look like he’s randomly cutting down the burl, but pretty soon it starts to form an oval shape associated with fire-breathing lizard eggs. Once the bottom half is more rounded, he flips the burl over and works on creating the ‘tip’ of the egg.

You may notice he doesn’t completely smoothen all the nooks and crannies of the burl. This is so he can later fill in the gaps with resin to give the egg a more fantastical hue.

And what better color to paint a dragon egg than blue? Using what looks like some heavy duty tape and papier-mâché (or paper mache), Andy fills in the burl gaps with a mixture of resin and blue coloring.

Once the resin dries, it’s back to the wood lathe for more chipping. Andy uses more tools this time around to fine tune the egg’s shape without cracking the resin. Once he deems the egg looks close enough to hatching, he sands it down.

With the egg all shaped and sanded, he then applies wood polish. Before polishing, the resin inside the egg looks little more than a bunch of paint spots ruining the finished product. But after Andy applies the polish with a little help from his wood lathe, the dragon egg looks ready to spit blue fire and eggshells at any moment.

All he has to do now is chop off the excess wood and polish it down. It won’t be hatching anytime soon, but this egg would do wonders as a table piece or a very heavy paperweight. At the very least, you can be sure it’s going to fire up some conversations.

Andy Phillip has an entire YouTube channel dedicated to his different wood and resin works, but if you just want the end products, you can view his works over on Instagram and even purchase some on his Etsy page.

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