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.

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.