July Challenge

I was more than delighted to win the June challenge, Mr Pot Pourri was a winner all round!  The prize plaque was very nice too.

This months challenge has the theme, Artistic.  With a very broad spectrum of possibilities.

My eventual choice was to go with ancient Egypt as an inspiration for this oval finial box.

The final image is of an actual (or possibly a reproduction) Egyptian Artifact that has some similarities with my entry.

Rustic

I need to start taking before and after shots, the lump of timber this hollow form / vase what have you came from was not something for the fainthearted, 18" long, a great black hole with water and soil and whatever else found sucour in there surrounded by the remains of long gone branches, one of which had been sawn off years ago, the black wood still bearing the saw marks.

What to do with such a thing? I sawed off the other end to make a flat and square base and screwed the faceplate to it with 6 2.5" screws, about half the wood was punky, the rest sound, if spalted.

Roughing was a very slow process as the torque was very great, the old branches being hard like old knots, it took an age to render the thing cylindrical, but eventually I manged it and also turned down a tenon with sufficient material left for a bowl later too.

The shape was not something I planned, I just went with what leaving the natural edge and gaining something vaguely pleasing in form from the rest of it.

After hollowing, during which my primary aim was to maintain a constant wall thickness, which I almost managed, but it is a little thin at one point,  I went over the outside with a single pass using a small spindle gouge to get a decent "off the tool" finish which is what it would be left with, no sanding at all, (definitely not inside, no way was introducing anything other than a hollowing tool to that shape, it looks scary enough stationary, spinning, it does not invite you to attempt any kind of abrasive treatment!) David Ellsworth might be able to handle it, but not me. :)

I then coated it with several coats of finishing oil and a single coat of hard wax, then buffed it a little to give it a nice patina.

I like it because it made something of a truly rotten piece of timber, which nontheless has some very redeeming features as regards grain and colour, if not so much from the form. It was also quite fun to do as it was completely unplanned.

Gorse Candlesticks

Sometime back my son Richard brought me a large stem of Gorse, the bark is particularly interesting in that it is deeply fissured and angular making for a most interesting texture. Having already asked what He and his wife Jen would like me to make them, Candlesticks were settled on and I decided to use the gorse for the job.

In drying the wood split considerably, so a colour fill seemed a good option, having been employed several times before I was confident it would look OK. I also got some pearlescent powder which leaves a nacreous sheen, it works OK, but unfortunately part of the process is to heat the powder up upon the surface it is adorning to a pretty high temp with a heat gun, experiments proved that this darkened the wood (reaching a scorching point) and also caused further splitting, so I had to abandon that idea.

The bark, while looking great as a texture, was also pretty flaky and messy looking, I gave it a scrub with a brass brush which did improve it some, but it still had lots of tiny flakes hanging off, so I used this extremely fine gold powder and brushed it into the bark, then sealed it with an acrylic sealer, I finished the stems with shellac.

I also incorporated some of the gold dust into the dark blue to make it look like Lapis Lazuli.

Mr Pot Pourri

 

This months challenge on the UK workshop forum is a Pot Pourri pot/bowl with a made rather than a bought lid, this one was a challenge alright, it went through several evolutions and some other adventures before I finally arrived at this finished piece, having made the bowl, it had a distinct look of a Mr Man character, so I made an appropriate hat.

Ash Natural Edge

A small bowl from Burr Ash just a decorative piece as it is rather small being just 10cm tall and the same wide at the widest point. Pretty grain though, and walls are just 3mm so very fine.
This is a revisited piece though rather than a new one, the old shots did not really do it justice.

Two of a kind

A couple of natural edged bowls, very different in shape and design, but with aspects in common, mainly the colour.
The first is a small extended bowl, the main challenge in this was to make the curve continuous, also the colour technique was similar to the Oak pot posted earlier, a diluted mix of green and blue thinned with spirit, finish is spray lacquer.

The second bowl was coloured in a similar fashion with some purple added to the mix. The finish on this though is something new, Shellac, this is the first time I have successfully finished a coloured piece with shellac, being spirit based it has a distinct tendency to wash the colour out, or at least move it around, plus the colour can get on the rubber making it useless for anything else, however, with care, I avoided these problems and got the benefit of the shellac gloss.

May Challenge

My entry for the UK workshops May Challenge which has the subject, "Three Woods"  breakfast is ready here with an egg of Olive Ash, egg cup of Holly and plate of Beech.  Actually I forgot about the challenge and had to put this together a bit quickly today.

Small Bowl

Back to basics a bit, the coloured items, while striking, do not seem to be currying much favour among the purchasing set, in fact very little of late has been moving at all. That being so I am stocking up on a few more "traditional" items, mainly bowls, to have a good variety available and thus hopefully please at least someone well enough to generate a sale.  First completed item then is this little (7" X 2") Sycamore fruit bowl, nice simple design, but still elegant (well, I think it is anyway!) Please leave a comment whether you think so or not, I appreciate all and any feedback.

Oak vase II

This is the second little pot or vase I made from the Oak log "rescued" from the roadside ditch in Slebech.
Inspired by a similar pot, which had been artificially "aged" in Richard Raffan's book "The art of turned bowls" I wanted to produce a similar effect.
It was turned green (as was the first one) and once I had completed turning the outside I tried to ebonize it by burning it with a propane blowtorch, but the wet wood was not only resisting the flame really well, the inner parts of the grooved section wasn't altering in the slightest.  Patience ran out and I resorted to black stain which I then buffed heavily to try and gain a little patina, I did not over sand the piece as I wanted a very coarse turned look, I think I managed to get most of what I wanted, but the paler undercolour of the wood where it shows through need to age and darken on it's own before it will become properly convincing.

It's very nice to handle though!

Oak Vase

After the recent storms that fetched down so many trees I am often finding odd branches on the roadside that have been thrown to one side to clear the way, mostly they are impractically large to get into the car, but I did manage to get a nice Oak branch from Slebech a few weeks back, from the largest section I made two very different little pots or vases (you decide!)  this is the first one to be completed, coloured but only lightly, the medulary rays and growth rings make a very interesting pattern, like a spiders web.

The pot is quite small, about 3.5 inches tall. Finish is Melamine.

Oddity

I finally got round to photographing the little offcut oddity now it has been finished. Here are a couple of shots.  You can see this being made on youtube here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6OnCYTvnfg