Back in February, I made a vase out of an oddly shaped piece of white oak and posted it on the blog. I liked it and had plans to give it away to a co-worker in Atlanta, but every time I looked at it, I thought, “come on, Mark, you can do better than that”! So I sat it where I’d have to look at it each day and waited for some inspiration to hit me as I walked by. It took a couple of months, but it finally dawned on me that while I liked the form of the vase, the wood grain was just too plain. Simple. There wasn’t anything to really make a person want to look at it, let alone make them want to look at it for more than a passing glance.
That’s when I got an idea.
The thought was that I would affix small, cut pieces of tree limbs to the side, “grout” it all together with black epoxy putty, and end up with something that looked totally different! Simple concept, except once again, I failed to pay adequate attention to Mr. Zoerb’s sophomore geometry class. Remember the basics? If you have a flat plane that intersects with a sphere (or any other rounded surface) the point on contact will one line, no more, no less. In woodturning, that means the piece of limb will only be attached to the vase in one thin place, leaving the rest of the material hanging over the surface of the vase with absolutely no support. Being an idiot, I figured CA glue would be “strong enough”, so there wouldn’t be a problem. I started laying in the epoxy putty and realized that there’s no really good way to squish the putty under the pieces and that it was difficult enough to completely fill in the cracks. Oh well, it’ll still be “strong enough”… Well, it wasn’t! no matter how light of cut I took, pieces flew off the lathe like I was being shelled. Many of them fractured into small pieces and some just flew into my face protector, then rolled under something heavy. I was going to quit, but there was so much money in epoxy putty already on the vase, it was becoming more of a battle of wills to complete the quest than anything else. It took over a week to get the pieces glued back on and the spaces under the pieces adequately glued with multiple layers of CA glue to hold them in place. I ended up sanding the limb pieces thinner, so there wasn’t as much wood to remove later and so it was easier to get the epoxy putty squished in.
Eventually, I was able to start the re-turning process and came out with the new and improved vase below. Much, MUCH, better! Now, I have to decide it I’m still going to give it away, or if I’ll put it back in the walkway path as a trophy for having completed the quest…
Here’s a picture with the vase in it’s new, finished, form:
