Thursday, September 26, 2013

Having some fun.

Not posted anything new for a while as the turning has been put aside for other work for a bit. However, a forum challenge to make a rice bowl and chopsticks was something that definitely excited my interest, I had an idea in mind and wanted to progress it to completion.
I had seen several stunning pieces of work recently making use of various metallic colouring techniques and I was sure this would look good on the challenge, so I procured the necessary materials and set too. Here then is the result.




The interior of the bowl is coated with a type of metal leaf called Schlag metal, it is applied in the same way as Gold leaf and is very tricky to do, especially on such a tightly curved surface as this bowl's interior, but I think the effect is well worth the time and effort.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Natural Apple

I roughed this bowl out in May, it was pretty straightforward despite the knots, however, once dry it was a different story, the outside was OK, but the inside was hard as iron and very prone to making the gouge snatch and difficult to control, hence I ended up using a carbide scraper to finish off shaping the interior curve, naturally this resulted in a mishap (how unusual!) and an unpleasant pair of cracks appeared from the rim down through what is now the red coloured section, however, by judicious use of CA glue and liberal coats of lacquer  cut back I was able to effect a repair that is as good as invisible, what luck!

The natural edge looks a little strange, this is because it isn't trully natural, the section above the red bit was in fact sawn by the logger, so I had to do a little shaping, also the bark was extremely fibrous which meant I had to dispense with much of it as it steadfastly refused to tidy up, being utterly determined to look as hairy as possible.

The feathered section I have coloured Yellow combined with the overall scheme looks very like an idealised comet in the night sky, so I will likely market the bowl with that as a theme.

The colour is Chestnuts spirit stain and cellulose lacquer cut with buffing compound and polished on the 3 wheel system.