Thanksgiving Turkey Oak Platter

A wide, shallow platter in turkey oak, with its cracks filled in black Milliput rather than cut away. At 32cm across it would work as a fruit platter, or even as a cake stand.

Turkey oak’s name has two possible origins, depending on which turkey oak you mean. A colleague at the club told me it comes from the leaf shape, which looks like a turkey’s foot, and that’s true of the American turkey oak (Quercus laevis). The European turkey oak (Quercus cerris), the one most often found in British woodland, is named after the country instead, being native to south-east Europe and Turkey. Either way, it seemed the right wood for a Thanksgiving platter.

The blank came from the Kent Woodturners wood store, 14 inches across and with a few small cracks. Then it spent an afternoon in a hot car during one of 2026’s many UK heatwaves, and those cracks opened up considerably.

I could have turned the cracks away, but that would have meant cutting the platter’s diameter down significantly, and I didn’t want to lose that much of a 14-inch blank. So I compromised, and tried Milliput for the first time, pressing it into each crack once the back had been roughed out.

I was really pleased with the result. The Milliput filled the cracks, leaving dark lines that follow the splits out to the rim. It gives the platter a distinctive finish, and it’s certainly better than a much smaller piece.

Finished with melamine lacquer, which brings out the oak’s ray fleck and the swirl of the grain across the face.