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.

NBG Show

Just a quick pic from yesterday as we are about to set off again!

Day one was very busy with lot's of turners and interested people asking about the colour work and watching the demonstration, which was a kind of ongoing thing through the day. At one point a family with three children stopped to watch so I got the children to have a go, here  is a shot taken by the NBG photographer of the little girl colouring a bit of a bowl.

Terry was also demonstrating the buffing wheels.

Day two was busy at first but quietened down in the afternoon. I had an enjoyable time though and managed to make a sale or three.

Winner!

The pestle and Mortar came a surprising first in the December monthly challenge!

Some really nice entries in this months challenge, check them out here

The results page with the judges comments is here.

Green Oak

Having recently sold the vibrant little Blue and red Vase, I found a nice piece of Oak in the log pile that I decided to have a go at colouring and make a replacement.  It didn't turn out quite as I imagined, but then that is about par for the course when it comes to using colour with wood. Still, I do like the end result. How about you?

This was a very tricky subject to photograph too, the way the open grain has picked up the colour is very striking in the hand, but the light and reflections made that hard to capture well, plus it has a very glossy finish which required direct rather than the diffuse light of the first two images to bring out, all in all though I think the shots do the item justice.

Monthly Challenge

I missed the last two, this is December's subject, a Pestle and Mortar. Soon to be posted in the UK worshop forum which hosts the challenge. Visit the forum here.

Blue vase

Pressing on with the goal of getting a shellac finish onto coloured pieces this is stage two, multi coloured, the main difficulty with this is that the shellac is a solvent (well the meths the shellac is in is a solvent!) to the colour, so applying the shellac with a rubber as per french polishing carries the risk of moving the colour about and even removing it, so not an easy task.
Why bother when I can use a rattle can lacquer? Well, I find the spray lacquers very good IF you get it right, but getting an even spray, avoiding bloom and the considerable amount of effort it takes to buff it up to a gloss, as opposed to the rather more straightforward process with shellac means that the shellac system offers a faster, more reliable and easier means of achieving the desired result.

On top of that the shellac is a bit easier to repair should you have a small accident.

Finish wise, the shellac, if applied with care, needs a minimal amount of buffing to get it to a superfine gloss, this vase is as close to a perfect finish as I have been able to get so far, I am very pleased with the gloss, in the hand it is glass like, all over (the outside, the inside has shellac to about a third in and ebonizing lacquer for the rest).

Height is 115mm width 100mm  Made from Sycamore, coloured with Chestnuts spirit stains and buffed with their wheel system for the finish.

Natural edged in colour.

This started as a commission which was canceled, no problem though as it was something I had in mind anyway.

The bowl is is Ash and has some nice feather features that the colour works really well with, the finish is shellac and the bowl is 9.5 inches wide.

Result!

Persuaded by my charming daughter in law, Jen,  to join her in entering the craft section of the local county show I put in 4 items, 3 in the faceplate section, a neat little sycamore bowl, a coloured hollow form and the very large coloured hollow form.

Having last months entry for the challenge to hand I though I would put that in the "turned between centres" section.

First in this group was a spalted pedestal bowl.

The small Sycamore bowl took third

The small Hollow form took second in the same group

And the challenge entry "Essence of Egypt"  took first in it's class!

And the icing on the cake was that Jen, also won two first prizes with her entries as well!! :)

Posterity project.

This old gun stock came from a double barreled (side by side)  Elephant rifle, hammer action and made by Cogswell and Harrison, the London gun makers, probably about the 1920's (that is a rough guess) I am pretty sure the guns calibre was a 500 express.
The gun was given to my father by a German count who was a family friend and at that time even, the stock was already broken, the gun being something of a curio. No one ever got round to properly fixing it (in fact it really needed an entirely new stock, an expensive item!) and the gun has long gone, but the stock turned up recently as something to be disposed of, so I picked it up and will make something of it as a kind of momento, I don't know what yet. I am pretty certain it will be Walnut, but how figured I don't know.

As far as I remember (the guns history in the family goes back over 45 years) the gun did not have any great monetary value despite the prestigious name on the side plates. There is no name or other marks on the remaining original stock fittings, that is the small plate under the half pistol grip. The butt of the stock has a steel plate that may have been original, but it looks kind of rough for a C&G piece of workmanship, the steel strap extending down the grip is an attempted repair of the stock, not a success.

Preseli Laburnum

Back in the spring I received a call from a farmer in the Preseli mountains who had seen my work at an earlier craft fair and who had offered me some Laburnum when it was felled, the felling had been done and so we went to collect the prize. As always when anyone offers me wood, I always make them something from it as a thank you and as a memento of the tree etc. The big problem this time though was not realised until later, once I started to prepare the wood for storage it became obvious that it would not really be much good for anything of any size, the timber was pretty old for it's size and had shakes all through it, no doubt from the harsh conditions up the mountain, but there should be sufficient to get a piece or two out.

First task then was to at least sort out a piece for Richard, the farmer. He and his wife had recently refurbished their house, utilizing a good amount of Ash from a tree felled outside the building, widow sills and various beams and shelving had been made and there was a considerable usage of the more rustic parts, nice looking it was too. So in keeping with that theme I went for a somewhat rustic piece (not that I had a lot of choice!)

I had roughed it out back in the spring, and even that proved tricky as one of the shakes broke clean away and had to be re-glued into place, I used gorrila glue as it filled the rather gappy crack where the wood parted.

It was not until I got to work finishing it though that I noticed that it had burrs, I have not seen a Laburnum burr before, but combined with the already complex Laburnum grain, the burrs look very nice. I have included a couple of close up images of the Burrs.

There were quite a few drying cracks as well that did not really enhance the piece, I decided on a colour fill for these, I took a couple of pictures and opened them in photoshop, then inverted the image, this gave me a colour, the exact opposite of the wood, I blurred this to get an average which was a mid Grey-Blue, this would be the best contrasting colour. To get the colour, I used some Ash sanding dust (I save lots of dust in little bags) and mixed up some stains to get the colour as close as I could, I dried it, then mixed the coloured dust into an epoxy resin and used it to fill various gaps. It actually ended up a bit darker than was ideal, but it works for me anyway. Plus it was an entirely new idea as a way to get the colour, next time I will make it lighter (it goes darker when it gets mixed with the glue)

Here then is the completed piece, I hope Richard likes it, it should fit in with his new house very well I feel.

Comission

A week or so back I was very pleased to see I had sold one of the Olive Ash Boxes,

once it arrived at it's destination in Canada, the customer was more than pleased, so much so she wanted another in the same wood, did I have any?

Just one reasonable piece left!

After several different designs were considered, she settled for this one.

 Which has resulted in this Olive Ash version.

The lid fit is very smooth and nice, having sufficient suction to hold on despite any shaking, yet easy to remove, (you don't want your customers to be wresting with the lid!)

This was met with the very favourable comment " Absolutely gorgeous!!!! I love it! "  

New box sold!! :)