Today, I decided to play around some more with the epoxy putty. When I put some of the terracotta colored putty next to the black putty, it reminded me of tiger stripes. Well that needed to be played with some more! I found a piece of cherry that looked decent and decided to see if I could make something that looked like it had tiger stripes. I quickly realized that tiger stripes aren’t perfectly perpendicular, so getting some kind of variance in the lines was more difficult than I thought it was going to be. Here’s what I came up with. All things considered, I think I nailed this one!
A side view of the box, to show what the top of the lid ended up looking like. I think the stripes turned out really good!I had some left over putty, so I put a little more tiger stripe on the underside of the lid. Apparently, like cowbells, you just can’t have enough tiger stripes!
These two little guys were from the wood that was left over when I cut out a HUGE red oak blank. Since they were from the end of the log, I could already see the damage that was present, which is why I took the “good” blank from the other end of the log. Still, they turned out better than I had hoped. They are riddled with weird grain coloration, bug damage, and some outright cracks. The color actually makes them look interesting, the bug damage always leaves little unexpected craters in the bowl, and the splits were filled in with red oak sawdust from the turnings and a little black CA glue. They’re each about 6″ wide, so they’ll sit nicely on a dresser to hold loose change and “pocket stuff”. Or… since one of my daughter’s seems to this she has the right of first refusal on everything, they are apparently the perfect size for eyeliner pencils, mascara, lip stain, and a whole other assortment of war paint.
Not too bad for wood that I was intending to use for the next weenie roast!
So I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been busy in the shop finishing up some projects, but hadn’t quite gotten around to updating the website. Looks like today’s as good a day as any to get that taken care of. In no particular order, here’s the latest:
I’ve been going through a stash of blanks that I made last fall, doing the final turning. The first several are all from an ash tree that came from a daughter’s, friend’s, mother’s, house. This one is about 9″ across, so at least it’s functional.
This is my second attempt at playing around with epoxy putty. I was going for a really cool zebra stripe, but it turns out to be harder than it looks to get the crazy patterns to be consistent.
Another one from the same tree. I was planning on leaving a wide rim on this one, so I had room to inlay some kind of epoxy putty design, but the rough out warped so bad by the time I could get it back on the lathe, the rim came out pretty thin. I was afraid that if I cut into it to make a channel to hold the epoxy, it would be too brittle to use. Lesson learned!
Can’t get much more plain than a round, ash bowl…
This is yet another bowl from the same ash tree. The only redeeming thing that makes this one even a little interesting is that it’s about 11 1/2″ across, so it’s more usable.
This one came from a pine log that a person at work gave me. I’ve never turned pine, but had always heard that it’s absolutely horrible to work with. Turns out, the people who told me that were dramatically understating just how terrible this wood is! My whole shop stunk of pine, and the grain on the wood tore out no matter what tool I used or how fast or slow the lathe was running. I ended up having to waste a HUGE number of hours with 60 grit sandpaper on a power sander, just to get the surface to be smooth. That big honking knot on the side is about a gazillion times harder than the surrounding wood, so every time the gouge would hit that part of the bowl, the gouge would “bounce”, leaving an uneven surface on the bowl. The wood is so unbelievably, will, pine like, I added some color by embedding yarn around the rim. That’s about the only part of the bowl that I actually like…
worst piece of wood I’ve ever tried to turn! The yarn around the rim is a nice touch, though.
This one was my second attempt at putting a yarn border around the rim of a bowl. It’s small, maybe 4″ across, but I think I like the color. Seems the darker the wood, the more I like it! Odd thing with this is, that even with the glue to hold the yarn down and the spray lacquer coating, the yarn still feels fuzzy to the touch. Not what you expect when you pick up a bowl!
This little piece of maple came from a limb of a tree that the kids saw on the side of the road. Sad that they’ve picked up the wood scavenging illness from me and will stop the car to take rough measurements of the wood’s diameter.
