Cascade Wood Turners Mtg

Tonight was the Cascade woodturners mtg. The demo was performed by John Beaver where he showed the method he uses to turn his wave bowls, that you can see on his website using the link to his name. It was a very cool technique and he made a couple of special jigs to create the bowls. While some of it was easily achievable, it took some thought to create the jig that he uses in the process. These are techniques that I would like to try later for my own stuff.

Visit his site and enjoy the gallery, but be careful of the splinters.

The Grape Vine

A neighbor of mine trimmed his grape vines down to try and produce some better grapes. I don't think he had done it in years. He gave me some of the trimmings and after 2 years I tried to see what I could make from them. Very few branches were straight enough to get to get 6 inches without a knot,a bend, or a branching. I did find places where there looked to be enough wood for a bottle stopper, so I cut a few pieces from the pile and headed into the shop. I cut enough out to try and turn 2 pens and 3 bottle stoppers, even though I had no idea if they would turn at all and what the wood looked like. I got real lucky, it appears, on the first pen. The picture below shows how the wood looks after working through the moss and bark on the outside, to a very decorative and interesting wood.

After completing this pen, I had high hopes for the rest. As it turns out, the grape was full of cracks, wormholes and a soft core that seemed to reflect a central core, although it was hard to tell as it did not run very straight. Here is a picture of a second pen and 3 bottle stoppers I turned and then added colored epoxy in all of the cracks and holes I found. After a second turning, all four pieces when back to the bench for a refill of epoxy. you can see the epoxy I used, as well as the paint I used to color the epoxy. I only used a single drop as that seemed to be sufficient and I did not want to weaken the epoxy too much.

I'm now waiting for the third batch of epoxy to set before I finish turning the pen and bottle stopper. Maybe I'll dig through the pile and look for another chunk for a pen.

Enjoy, and be careful of the splinters.

Goofing around

I had a small piece of myrtle wood in a chuck so I turned a small bell shape, which I turned into a small 'critter'. This was all done in fun for me. But Myrtle wood is hard to carve, so I used a rotary tool to get the shapes I wanted. I also tried wood burning on it, which actually worked quite well. A touch of paint, even some extra paint that I didn't see until I blew up the photographs. You can see from the carved area around the legs that the shape was a tad thin. The shaped area is the result of cracking when I tried to reverse mount the shape on the lathe so I could turn the top. All of the carving and wood burning was done at my bench, most of the time with a magnifying viewer. The legs are from bass wood scraps. Other than the paint around the eyes and feet, there is no finish on this piece, yet.

Enjoy, and be careful of the splinters.