The following piece of Petrified Wood was found along the Colorado River in Arizona. I purchased the stone on Ebay and alas it arrived in one piece. I was afraid it might break during shipment. I tried making a diaza out of a piece of Ironwood. This was my first attempt at making a diaza. I took the stone down to the local bonsai club and two very advanced stone members thought I should substantially reduce the right side of the diaza. I took their advice and used a power tool on it and removed a lot of wood. I added some movement to the wood at the same time. There was no texture on the wood at all with only some worm holes in the wood. There was a very thin piece of wood on the left side of the diaza with a large cavity behind that. All of the texture you see in the photo is man made. I used a tungstien carbide cutting wheel slightly larger then 1/8 inch to add the texture to the wood. All hollows are man made except the small oval holes. Starting on the top of the wood texture was added radiating out in all directions from the center. The texture continued radiating down the sides of the wood until you hit bottom. All of the hollows have texture in them with the texture still radiating in the same direction using the same line as on top of the wood. This was a very time consuming process. The color of the raw wood was a light gray. I stained the wood a dark mahogany color. I used Tung Oil as a finish for the wood. I like Tung Oil a lot. I used a Dremel with a flexible shaft to carve the wood. The opening for the stone was done with a coarse tungstien carbide cutting wheel used on the Dremel. All in all a fun project during the hot days of summer.

“Petrified Wood” Colorado River Viewing Stone