Epoxied Maple Burl Bowl

Now that I finished the plywood bowl from my previous post, I decided to turn a bowl from a piece of maple burl that I had sitting in the shop.  I’ve never worked with burl outside of pen making so I had no idea what to expect.  Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I was expecting it to go like my pens: easy and neat (clean).  When I started turning the blank, I saw a small crack&void.  I figured I could get rid of it by just turning past it.  Sure, I would end up with a smaller bowl but the crack would be gone.   Little did I know that with burl, small cracks & voids can become BIG cracks & voids (hereafter referred to as voids).

Since my predominate form of woodworking involves furniture and boxes, I did what I would normally do: tape all exit points and fill the offending area with epoxy.  I wasn’t really thinking about this as I did it and ended up using about 9 ounces of epoxy.   Even then, it wasn’t completely filled.  It seemed like quite a bit and possibly unsafe so I did the “stop, tuck, and roll” and asked for help on WoodCentral.   Got some suggestions and links to how others dealt with the voids.  I decided to just finish the turning as I normally would.

The burl proved to be a very interesting medium.  It was very easy to hollow out the center, but very tough near the void.  Got a ton of catches there which I am guessing was due to the epoxy catching on my bowl gouge.  I switched over to my Easy Wood Tools finishing tool and it went very well, even on the epoxy.  Carbide cutters are a wonderful thing.  I ended removing probably 8.5 ounces of the epoxy by the time I finished turning

The end result was nothing like I envisioned.  It my haste to remove the void at the beginning of turning, I removed quite a bit of material.  This completely threw out the shape I was aiming for.  It’s not horrible by any means, but it’s not drop dead gorgeous either.  The shape sorts of looks like a first attempt at making pottery. In any event, I am happy with it and I’m also chalking this up to one big learning experience.

Here are some photos.  Sanded to 800grit and finished in my beeswax/mineral-spirits lotion.

This was the second time my Easy Wood Tools finisher came to the rescue.  I have the Rockler version of this tool and must say that there is no comparison.  The Rockler tool just doesn’t cut it at my skill level.  I am thinking it has to do with the angle of the cutterhead.  When the tool is held level, the cutter has an upward angle that may be too high.  The solution may be for me to lower my tool rest a bit, angle the tool, or something else.  Being a novice turner, I just don’t know.  I’ll play around it some more on my next bowl now that I have something to compare it to (EWT).

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Adventures in Bowl Turning

A few years ago, I walked into my local Woodcraft on a Super Bowl Sunday.  As expected, the place was dead.  While I was checking out, I noticed the whiteboard of classes and saw that I just missed a basic bowl turning class.  I’ve been wanting to learn how to turn a bowl for a while so I inquired about the next class.  Since the store was dead, the answer I received was “How about now?”    I spent the next 4+ hours learning the basics of bowl turning.

Since then, I’ve turned about eight bowls that weren’t thrown out.   I think I may actually be up to around thirteen or fourteen if I count the ones that didn’t survive.    Why didn’t they survive?  Bad choice of wood, poor execution, and such.  A friend of mine cut down his Mesquite tree about 5yrs ago and I end up with a number of his logs.   I made a rookie mistake in using the now very dry Mesquite for a few of the bowls.  I got lots of cracks and blow-outs.  All I can say is that I am glad I wear a face shield.

Of the bowls that did survive, I think I turned a few nice ones and few that are so-so. Here are some pics. You can click on them to see a larger image.

This bowl is one of my favorites.  It’s from a block of Jobillo.  Not the best turning I’ve done, but the colors and grain pattern make up for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s are a few shots of a bowl made from Ambrosia Maple.  I did not I put a finish on it.  At first, I didn’t realize I needed one since I was getting really nice shiny finishes.  Then I realized after a few bowls that the finishes were shiny because I was sanding up to 12000 with MicroMesh.  BTW, the Jobillo bowl above has no finish either.  That shine is all sanding baby!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s some shots of two bowls made from Mesquite.  I don’t know why the first one ended up looking like a flower pot.  Wasn’t what I set out to do.  You can see the blow-out in the bottom photo.  I drilled it out and plugged it with a lighter piece of Mesquite.  Almost looks like a sunrise when seen up close.  Finish is CA glue.

 

This last bowl is the hardest bowl I have turned to date.  It’s made from Baltic Birch Plywood.  Turning the outside wasn’t so bad, but the inside was a bear.  I kept on getting catches that nearly ripped the tools out of my hands.  It got so hard that I stopped and left it in the chuck for a few months while I mulled over my options.  I was at my local Woodcraft this weekend and saw a demo of the Easy Wood Tools carbide cutting tools.  I picked up the mid-sized Easy Finisher and decided to try it out on the bowl.  It worked a lot better than my other tools, but I still had catches.     I’m thinking the catches were from voids in the plywood.  I finally got to the point where I couldn’t control the tool very well due to not having a long enough tool rest.  So I resorted to my emergency cutting tool – sandpaper – to finish the inside.  It took some time and quite a bit of 80grit sandpaper, but I finally completed the bowl.   The finish is beeswax partially dissolved in mineral spirits.

 

          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve got a few other bowls made from Orange Osage and Mesquite, but they aren’t very interesting.  No reason to take up valuable free disk space with large photo files.

Now that my chuck is no longer in use holding the plywood bowl, I am going to start work on some nice burl pieces that I picked up.  I’m also thinking that I need to get another chuck.  I don’t want to be in the same situation of not being able to turn bowls again because of not wanting to unmount a bowl that’s in progress.  I may even venture into turning green wood.  Who knows?

I can see a few more classes in my future.  While the Woodcraft instruction was fine, I think a lot was left out.  We didn’t really spend much time on wood selection, grain orientation, and tool sharpening.  The official syllabus may cover those topics in more detail, but since I was the only one in the class the instructor asked me what I wanted to do, which was pretty much turn a bowl.

 

Working with Dyes

Warning: I had trouble writing the first few paragraphs…they don’t really flow together so just deal with it.

I have to admit that I am sucker for eye-popping grain.  It’s sort of like a photo with saturated colors; it just grabs the eye and draws you in.  Now imagine popped grain with color.  Oh man!!!!   Talk about eye candy.

For Chanukah, I received a gift certificate to Woodcraft.  I’ve always wondered how folks finished their work with some colored eye-popping grain.  So I bought a number of the TransTint dyes, took a board of Birdseye maple, a board of curly maple and attempted to do just that.  The only problem was that I didn’t have a “recipe” to follow.  I checked a few videos on YouTube and such, but couldn’t find one that really catered to my needs.  Most were just on applying wood-toned stains or popping the grain.  Not much out there with color.

So I muddled about, starting with the Birdseye maple.  I actually had two of these boards two work with.  Both boards were sanded to 220.  Then I spritzed them with water to raise the grain and sanded that off with 400 grit.  I took one of the Birdseye maple boards and sealed it with a 1lb cut of Zinnser SealCoat.  The other board was left naked.  This was the point where I encountered my first problem.  The directions on the TransTints say that the ratio is something like two ounces of dye to a gallon of water.  Sigh.  Just great.  How much for a half ounce of water?  I used 8 or so drops of dye.  I wiped on a coat, let it dry, and then another coat, wiping off the excess.

I didn’t get the depth I was looking for, but a little more research said that I needed to apply a topcoat.  I used a wipe-on Poly, applying three coats.  As you can see in the photo, still not so colorful and “popped”.   The sealed board was even less colorful and popped.

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I tried again with the curly maple using the same process.  The only two variances were a higher dye/water ratio and a Deft spray on lacquer topcoat .  The difference is quite noticeable.  I am going to make the assumption that the biggest factor was the amount of dye used.  Before I put the topcoat on, I could tell that the results were going to be better.

Just look at the two on the right.  Honey Amber and Lemon Yellow. POP!

The reds and browns came out nice as well, just not as dramatic as the lighter colors.

So now I have a recipe/process of sorts.  I just need a project that would benefit from it.  I’m thinking dyeing some pens and bottle stoppers.  Possibly a small box or bowl as well.  I don’t want to overdo it.   As with a photo, the saturated colors can detract from the whole.

Adventures in Pen Making

When I am “in between” projects or just want some instant gratification, I make pens.  When I need to burn off some steam, I make a lot of pens.

One of the first two questions to answer when making pens is “which kit?” and “from whom?”  Since I do not sell what I make, I’m not picky about my supplier of components.   On the other hand, since I do not sell what I make I also need a supplier who is affordable, especially when I am in “burn steam” mode.  As such, I tend to purchase from the big 3 (Rockler, Penn State, and Woodcraft).  I love it when the basic slimline goes on sale for below $2.  That’s my cue to stock up since that is the kit I use for when I need some therapy.

When I want to make a really nice pen, I venture into some of the more expensive kits.  My current favorite kit is the Navigator from Woodcraft.  It looks nice, it writes nice, and it feels nice in the hand.  It’s at the pricier end ($10-$20 depending on finish) of the spectrum for me though.  I’ve tried a few of those expensive ($30+) kits from Penn State and may acquire a few more to be used as gifts.  They are nice, but I am not sure they are worth the price.  I don’t think the people I would give them to would know how to appreciate the elaborate/fancy kits.  It’s like an expensive wine: most of us without the fancy palate or background knowledge wouldn’t understand why it’s expensive.

Once the first two questions are answered, there is one more to go: “what material to use as the blank?”   I’ve tried numerous woods, acrylics, corian, Rice Krispies (don’t ask), and a few others.  I prefer to stick with the woods, but I do use the acrylics now and then.    I’ve learned the hard way that I cannot make a decent pen from a few of my favorite woods, such as Bubinga.  The turning goes well; it’s the finishing that fails.  More on this later…  One of current favorites to use is Sandalwood.  It turns nicely, has a pleasant aroma while turning, and take a finish quite easily.

I buy pen blanks from the big 3, but I also get a lot of source material from the scrap bin – mine as well as other folks’.   In fact, I am currently working my way through a ton of leftover maple from an Adirondack chair build.  I may take this a little too far though because I save the pen blank cutoffs and re-use them in what I call Frankenpens.  Frankenpen is the term I use for my pens that are made from a mish-mash of materials.

When I first started turning pens, I would finish them with a friction polish.  I like the way the friction polish feels, but it doesn’t seem to last long.  If the pen gets used frequently, the finish would only last a few weeks.  That’s when I stumbled onto a website for making pens and folks there were very much into using cyanoacrylate glues (aka CA glues aka super glue).

It took me a while, but thanks to Russ Fairfield I think I found a method of getting consistent results using CA glue as a finish.  I start with paper towel cut in half lengthwise and fold it a few times to develop some thickness.  Then I add a few drops of Boiled Linseed Oil (BLO), followed by a few drops of CA glue, onto the towel.  With the lathe spinning, I vigorously rub the towel back & forth across the blank for about a minute.   I repeat the BLO/CA application about seven or eight times.  BTW, the curing CA glue gives off a nasty odor that burns the throat and eyes so I either run my dust collector to suck the foul air away from me or use a fan to blow it away.   The last step in my CA finish process is to use Meguiar’s PlastX to give the CA a final once over.

The only time this method of finishing fails me is on certain types of woods such as Bubinga and Macasar Ebony, which have large pores or deep grain.  When I am applying the finish, it looks like all is going well.  The next day is when I see the error of my ways.  The pens end up with a white haze somewhere in the finish.  I am thinking it is due to the CA glue in the pores not fully curing between coats.  I only do an initial sanding to 600 grit or so and I don’t fill the pores.  I could try sanding all the way to 12000 with MicroMesh, but that may be too fine a grit and create a surface that the CA cannot adhere to.  I don’t know because I haven’t tried it.

Here are some photos of some of the pens I have made.  You can click on them to see a larger photo:

These are some of my Navigators.  From left to right: Hard Maple, ??, Sandalwood, Pau Rosa, and Snakewood.

Next, here is a closeup of the Pau Rosa:

Here are a few examples of the haze that I talked about.  The outer two pens are Bubinga.  Can’t remember what the middle pen is made from.

Here is a pic of a pen made from laminating up hard maple, macasar ebony, and cocobolo.  The maple is most prominent since it was the middle laminate.

Here are a few items from acrylic.  I know, the razors aren’t pens but they are made the same way.

Here’s a pic of two slimlines. The one on the left is Tulipwood, the other Cedar.

Finally, these are the blanks for my latest batch of Frankenpens.  Woods below include Tulipwood, Sandalwood, Cedar, Lemon, Pau Rosa:

Bottle Stoppers or Bust

This first real post is going to be a quickie so here it goes….I was surfing around on the Internet and saw a video about adding cast resin to bottle stoppers.  This gave me a few ideas for Chanukah and Christmas presents.    Instead of just having a plain clear top, I embedded various items such as the New Jersey state quarter, parts of wine bottle corks, and glitter.  Here is a sampling of my work:

I was playing around with a cork from a bottle of wine my wife and I were drinking and noticed the letters “J” and “T” imprinted on the bottom of the cork.  Just so happens one our favorite couples are named James and Tracy.  So I cut the bottom of the cork off and embedded it in the cast resin.

Bottle stopper for my friends James and Tracy

As part of my goofing around with the resin, I decided to add a little color.  Here are some photos of bottle stoppers with various colors of glitter embedded in the resin:

Here’s a shot showing a number of bottle stoppers.  Some have burned in lines and some have a small band of resin as an added embellishment:

I had a fun time learning how to use cast resin, but I learned that it is finicky when it comes to sanding. I just couldn’t get the resin to come out smooth and clear.  Once I started using wet sanding techniques, things started moving forward.  If you do decide to go down this route, be prepared to spend at least 30 minutes sanding the resin.  It sounds like a lot, but it’s worth it.

Hopefully, this gives you a little inspiration for making bottle stoppers.

Why this blog?

Why not?  I already blog about my field of work – technology – so why not blog about my field of interest?  Don’t expect a whole lot from me as I am not a very good woodworker.  I do it more for the journey than the result.  Consider it therapy for my day job.