Blue Gum

    (Eucalyptus tereticornis)

Also known as: Forest Red Gum, Queensland Blue Gum

Blue Gum grows to about 30 metres tall with trunks to about 1.2 metres diameter on the Highlands although they can be found much bigger in areas along the East coast.

Usually found not too far from a watercourse of some sort, the Blue Gums flower through Spring and are also a food source for Koalas.

Some typical resin burls on Blue Gum trees around the highlands.

At just over 1000kg/m3, the timber is quite heavy and the grain is often interlocked (fiddleback) which can make it difficult to dress cleanly. The timber seasons well even in large sections. Blue Gum is traditionally used for engineering and construction work but is also useful for turning and furniture like the bar pictured here that the Emerald Woodworkers made for a raffle prize. 

  Blue Gum is quite hard but sands readily and although it will accept any finish applied, it comes up very nice with Kunos oil which I used on this bowl. Like most eucalypti, it is 'crumbly' and dusty to turn, this bowl from a burl being no exception! The burl was one of several taken from a large tree on the Comet River that got washed out in the big 2011 flood. 

Another piece from the same burl, this clock was made as a graduation gift for a wonderful girl I once gave a couple of woodturning lessons. The sleeve around the movement is turned from Emu Apple and the split surface was textured with the bandsaw and blackened before being tied together with stainless steel rods. The skeleton movement seemed fitting for an Engineering graduate.

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