Olive Ash Bowl

A few posts back I put up some pictures of three fresh cut bowls, one with very pretty grain, well, it's dried out and is now a finished product, and here is how it looks along with the green bowl shots below.

Rivers of Gold

It's been sometime since I made a post, I've not had much to put up. However, my latest project was a joint one, assisted by Richard my son!

Sometime back he called me into his own shed and showed me a strange device constructed from a microwave transformer, the two contacts complete with croc clips looked a little heath robinson, but he knows what he is doing.  The clips were attached to two small nails driven into a flat board about 18" long, a path was made between the nails with a solution of bicarb and the power switched on, the resultant track burned an interesting pattern across the wood.  Thus the idea to use this to decorate a bowl was born, and this is the result.

Couple of items from the county show

The Pembs county show has three classes for woodturning, faceplate, between centres and a matched pair.
This year I entered all three and was pleased to do quite well, in the faceplate class I got first and third with the natural edged Laburnum bowl and the spalted box (both below) I got a first and second in the between centres class with a thin stemmed goblet and a very nice little Thuya Burr and Ebony finial Box, and I got a second in the matched pair with these two Pillar candle sticks, so all in all an excellent result!

I also entered a coloured hollow form, but that failed to attract the judges eye, still, I think it looks very nice. The finish is the best I have done yet, it really is like glass, and was done using Pro XL lacquer, which I was alerted to by fellow turner, Dave Jenkins from Barry, no mean turner himself, he has made some wonderful coloured and pierced items that must have taken many hours, you can see a couple below.

The following pieces are Dave Jenkins's work

Summer Competition entry

The summer subject is very broad, a Bowl!

This is a natural edged bowl in Laburnam, made from a tree over 100 years old that grew in the Preseli mountains, full of cracks and shakes it was a real challenge to turn and keep it in one piece.

Beech Box

The UK workshop forum competition has changed to a three monthly format, the first subject of the year is a Box, this was my entry, which made the top spot, very pleasing!

Bowl number two from NBG

I finally got round to finishing the other Bowl I was colouring at the NBG show, this is the one the Children helped to colour! (they coloured part of the outside)

The inside has a very different character in colour to the outside in this bowl, being very green, but I feel it works very well as you have two natures to the bowl in one.

Inside finish is shellac, outside is acrylic lacquer. 20p is for scale.

Colour complete

A few shots of the bowl in the colour video now lacquered and polished.

Colour demo video

I made a small demonstration video showing some coulouring technique, below are a couple of shots showing the bowl in the light, but without any lacquer, you can see the colour looks well enough, but later, once the lacquer is applied, I will add the finished photos and you will see the difference a gloss finish can make to a coloured piece.


 Video Link

Magnetic Sound

Does anything attract the attention of a woodturner quite like the sound of a nearby chainsaw? We just have to see if there is anything interesting that might just be available and head right on over to the siren sound. So it was that I came across a large piece of Olive Ash that was part of the bent base of a large Ash tree compound trunk, the wood was being cleared away for a village pond and yes, I could have what I wanted, so I cut out the most likely sections and drove them back to the house to prepare and rough out.  The three resulting bowls are a very good size, the largest being a full 14" across (the lathe can manage 16", but that is true round, I had to chop these almost round just to get them mounted!)
But well worth the effort, the prize of course is the beautifully marked Olive Ash which dominates the main bowl base, it is a great shame that the wood does not retain these vivid colours though, but still, I am sure it will look very eye catching as a finished item.

Here are a few pictures.

Pot Purri

This little pot was actually an initial failure and was my first effort for the Pot Pourri competition that I eventually won with the Mr Pot Pourri pot a while back, this one though, would not play nicely with the hole cutting so I abandoned it and it languished on the workbench for some months.
Eventually though I thought it might be worth trying a different approach, the lid still fitted well which meant it was stable.
So I worked on the holes to try and tidy them up (they were frayed and the wood was brittle)  even now they are not perfect, but I applied the bronze dust to them and it masks the irregularities in a pleasing manner.

The finial is made from Cocobolo. Finish is polished Shellac.  I have also done a video od the polishing technique that I will upload in a few days.