Big oak burl: what to do?

A neighbor gave me a massive oak burl, far bigger than anything I’ve ever worked with. So this is a learning experience for me.

Big and heavy!

I started by cutting the burl protrusion off horizontally, about half of the height of this piece. I then cut that in two, slicing it down the middle on the longer axis of this piece. That gave me two halves that were each about 15 x 15 inches on the flat face. Here’s one of the halves:

There was a void near the middle. I’ve drawn a circle for planning a bowl cut. I may fill the void with colored epoxy, especially if I decide to core this for multiple bowls. Being 14″ diameter, coring makes sense here.

I removed some of the bark, to see what the burl surface looks like. This burly swirl made me think of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night, except the wood wasn’t blue like the sky!