Speaking of Things That Don't Quite Work...

This is another item that could be called an incomplete success.  One morning I found a robin's egg sitting on the sidewalk outside our house.  I don't know how it got there, but it was just sitting there, unbroken, on the concrete.  I had recently seen a video by Nick Zammetti and his attempt to encase a dandelion in resin.  I thought that I might have better luck with with the egg.

The first thing to do was to find a suitably gnarly piece of burl that had lost its bark to put the egg on.  After a little archaeological dig through my wood pile (I got as far down as 2006) I found a piece that would work and would make a nice little turned box.  The only problem was that it was in the middle of a larger chunk of wood.

I liberated a small sort of cylindrical section using my bow saw.

To keep the resin from soaking into the top of the wood I gave it a coat of sanding sealer and then made a mold using Gorilla Tape.  Is there anything that stuff can't do?

I glued the egg down with CA glue because I was afraid that it would float away when I poured in the resin.  Once the resin was poured I just had to wait a couple of days for it to harden.

When I came back to it though... disaster!  I don't know if there was a hairline crack in the egg that I didn't see or if the resin shrank as it cured or didn't harden evenly or what.  All I know is that when I came back to it I found this...

Bubbles everywhere!  It was a disappointment, to say the least.  I decided to press on though, and call it another practice run.  It really was too nice a piece of burl to give up on completely.

The actual turning of the box was a pretty standard affair so I won't go into too many details about that.  There are lots of videos on YouTube that can explain it better than I can, including the one I mentioned above.  There are a couple of things I would like to mention, though.

The first is this handy little flashlight from Chestnut Tools.

It's perfect for an application like this, where your head gets in the way of the light and prevents you from seeing into the depths of a turning.

The second was my method of sanding the acrylic resin.  I didn't want to use any liquid polish on it because I was afraid it would soak into the wood.  Instead I worked my way through the grits by sanding with the lathe running first until I had a consistent scratch pattern.  Then I would work along the radius with the same grit until the first set of scratches was gone.

When I changed to the next grit it was easy to tell when I had sanded enough because the radial scratches would be gone.  I found that if I spend enough time on the first grit the rest of them go fairly quickly.  When I was done I would up with this.

Another thing I discovered is that when you have a curved surface on the resin it acts like a lens and distorts the light passing through it, making it hard to get a good view of what is inside.

I finished the wood with three coats of General Water-Based Turner's Finish.  I thought it did a nice job of bringing out the figure in the wood without adding much color to it.

My Wife Was Going To Throw This Out

This post is out of order, there are two other projects that should be ahead of it, but this is a quick one and I'm super happy with the results so I'm pushing it ahead.

A friend had mentioned turning denim soaked in resin so one day when I was at my wife's store I asked her if she had any fabric scraps she wanted to get rid of.  She pointed to a bag beside the garbage can and said "knock yourself out."  I picked through the bag and grabbed all the shades of blue that I could find, along with some neon green for accent.

I mixed up some Alumilite Clear Cast and started dipping fabric.  Did I mention it's a good idea to cut the fabric into strips first?  Do that first.  A little too narrow is better than too wide, and too short is better than too long.  You need to be wearing disposable latex gloves for this, because you are getting your fingers right into the resin and saturating the fabric.  Unless you want your camera buttons to have a permanent candy coating, you don't take pictures either.

Once I was done and had peeled the gloves off this is what I had.

24 hours later it came out of the mold looking like this.  Not terribly promising, but...

Once it was turned it came out like this.  There are a few small bubbles but overall I was really happy with it.

It turned more like wood than plastic.  The shavings were more likely to break up rather than form strings like pure plastic usually does.  If you look closely you can even see the weave of the fabric.

It takes a while to do this, about an hour or more to prepare the blank, but the results are worth it.  I have already molded another one.

Some Stuff from the Holidays

When I took this picture the camera told me that the stormtrooper blinked.

I actually spent a fair amount of time at the lathe in December and I even have some things to show for it.  I suspect that most woodworkers have the same experience at least one December in their lives as they prepare gifts for friends and family.

I started the month by demonstrating turning at the Guild booth at the Sundog Arts & Entertainment Faire.  I  found myself with 5 hours of time to fill and I was determined to make the most of it.

The first thing I made was this little bowl from a leftover piece of Manitoba Maple.  It is finished with mineral oil and bees wax and measures just over 3 1/2 " across.

Next was this pen made from padauk and finished with Hutt Perfect Pen Polish.  After the pen I moved on to a small natural edge bowl.  I was almost done when there was a 'tick-BANG' and there were pieces all over the floor.  Fortunately there was no one watching at the time except for a couple of Guild members.  On to another pen.

This one was made from Alumilite casting resin, the 5 minute stuff, mixed with yellow dye and swirled with black.

With time winding down I moved on to what I thought was going to be a lidded box,  As I was roughing it out I stopped the piece of mountain ash I was turning to check my progress.

What I saw was this cool swirl of bark and the grain around it.  I was so taken with it that I decided to leave it the way it was.

When I took it home I drilled some holes in the top and stuck some tea lights in them.

After that I turned my attention to making my wife some Christmas presents.  I wanted to do something to help her out with her sewing habit, so I ordered some seam ripper kits from William Wood-Write,

Single ripper, closed, in Alumalite

Double ripper, open, Kingwood

Ripper & stiletto, open, unknown burl

If you've never seen one of these things before, let me warn you that they are nasty little weapons that would never be allowed on an airplane.  If your wife is mad at you, do not make one of these as a suck up gift.  If she's not in a good mood when you hand it to her you are taking a risk.

On the safer side, I also made her this bracelet.

It is made from maple and Indonesian rosewood.  I should have taken pictures while I was doing it because this thing was a struggle from start to finish, and I could have made a long blog post on this alone.  One thing I will talk about though, is the first of the problems I encountered.  Of course, when I cut the segments, I didn't get the angle right.  Fortunately I made my angle a little too narrow instead of too wide, so when I went to glue the two halves together I had to sand the inside corners, not the outside, to make them fit.

If you look at the maple piece that is vertical at the front, it looks the same as the others, but the one opposite on the inside is quite a bit narrower.  The tricky part was to stop sanding at the right point.  I guess I lucked out.

My wife was happy with the bracelet and and the seam rippers, although she did have a little constructive criticism about the rippers.  I will definitely make use of her advice when I make some more.

Pre-Christmas Pen Turning Binge

Pen turning is the crack cocaine of woodworking.  You think you can just do one, but then one thing leads to another and that one gives you an idea and soon you have way more pens than you can give away.  And you just keep going until the staff at Lee Valley tell you  you're cut off because your wife has gotten to them.  Okay, that last part didn't really happen, not quite, but I am so sick of pens right now I probably won't turn any more until next year.  Of course, next year starts Jan. 1.

This year is the first time that I tried using Alumalite Pearlescent Powder in my acrylic pens to give them some sparkle.  You can really see it in this pen & pencil set.

There is lots of it in the black parts of the set as well, but it is hard to see because there is a little too much black dye in them as well.

Getting the right amount of dye proved to be a challenge in most of the acrylic pens I made.  I knew that it was powerful stuff, but it turned out to be easy to overdo it, as was the case in this pen.

It was supposed to be red and green, but the green is almost blue and the red a dark purple.  The next pen was more successful.

I wish I could have gotten a better picture but this one went in a Christmas gift exchange before I realized how bad the picture was.

I also attempted to use metallic powders to make an aluminum looking pen.  I mixed white dye with gunmetal powder to darken it and some silver powder to make it sparkle, but although it did make it grey I didn't get the sparkle that I was looking for.  The metallic powders are meant to be used as a surface treatment and don't have the same effect when mixed into the plastic.

And now, how about some pens featuring some actual wood.  This one is made from kingwood.

Cocobolo.

And last but not least padauk, finished with CA glue.

I tried using CA glue as a finish on the other wooden pens I made but I had difficulty getting an even sheen.  I wound up sanding them all down and using a wax finish instead.

If you noticed the date on this post you would have seen that as I write this it is after Christmas. Would you be surprised to learn that I got a book on pen turning from Santa?

A Plethora of Pens

Wow.  I can't believe it has been three four five(!) months since my last post.  I blame work.  While it is not our busiest time of year, we brought in a new computer system and all of the preparation, learning, and implementation have been mentally draining.  Between that and a couple of other things going on I have not been feeling very inspired.  The really cold weather we have been having lately hasn't helped either.  Until recently the only thing I have done in the shop is fit some doors for the house.  Don't ask why, it just tick's me off.  Then, it was just too cold  to be out in the shop for a while.

Finally though I have been forced into the shop to make some pens.  Really I only had to make one, but it is so darn addictive that I couldn't stop.  I have to keep going until until I'm absolutely sick of making them.  I keep having these ideas and then I have to try to make them.  Some are more successful than others.

This one is a success.  It was made with Amazing Casting Resin (48 hour cure) swirled with blue and green ink.

Another one made with Amazing Casting Resin, this time with the 10 minute version, which dries opaque white, again with blue and green swirl.  While the pen looks good from this side it is a different story when you turn it over.

This stuff pours like water when you put it in the mold, so bubbles are not usually a problem.  Never have I seen a line of them turn up like this before.  It figures that they would wind up right at the surface of the pen.  Verdict: Fail

This pen turned out pretty good, although some of the fibers didn't stay down after the wax finish was applied.  Some of the wax built up in the pores, so the wood doesn't look as smooth as it is. I believe the wood is cocobolo.

I'm not sure that chrome hardware was the right choice to go with the mystery wood on this pen, but all the gold hardware was the right choice for other pens.

More mystery woods.  The one on the left may be walnut burl, but the color is a little light.  I have no idea what the one on the right is, but it is definitely not birds eye maple.  It has a very strong aroma when it is worked, not like any maple I have ever smelled.

This pen was trouble from the very start.  This is made with more of the 48 hour resin, which is quite a bit thicker than the 10 minute stuff.  I managed to get a lot of bubbles in the resin when I mixed it up.  I have run into this before so I have a solution to the problem, a home-built shaker that vibrates the bubbles out.  Unfortunately it also caused most of the glitter to sink to the bottom, so the glitter isn't as thick as I had hoped it would be.  What really killed this pen though was that the drill bit wandered while drilling the blanks, resulting in the cloudy areas at the top and bottom.

This is the pen that started this binge.  It was the only one I had to make, and it was the best of the bunch.  The Brazilian rosewood goes perfectly with the chrome and black trim.

I hope to be back a lot sooner next time.  I have already started another project and need to finish it soon.

Practice Makes a Bunch of Stuff

So I spent some time sharpening my turning skills.  Nothing too exciting, but I spent some time doing it so I will show what I have been up to.

 





This little scoop is made from beech.  The trick to making these is to make the little ball on the end as close to a perfect sphere as possible.  Then you can mount it in the jaws of the chuck with the handle sticking out to the side between the jaws and hollow the centre.

 

 

A small dish made from walnut burl.

 

 

I like the effect of burls.  At its best, the wood appears to be boiling and frozen at the same time.

 

 

This dish was made from a branch from a mountain ash tree that grew in my back yard.  It was cut through at a point where two smaller branches came off.

 

 

The nice thing about this wood is that it is very stable so you can do end grain turnings with it and not have to worry about it developing a bunch of checks.

 

 

Same branch, natural edge with the bark left on, side grain.  Both pieces were finished with mineral oil & wax.

 

 

More pens made with Amazing Casting Resins.  The pen on the left is made with the clear cast and shavings.  The other three are made with the 10 minute resin.

 

This pen and pencil are linked.  The pencil was made with shavings left over from the pen.

 

 Just to be different, I made a pen and pencil from actual wood.  they are finished with Hutt wax and pen polish.

 

I do think that practising turning helps to improve my skills.  The only problem is that now I'm tired of turning for a while and want to move on to other things.  It's this scattered approach that keeps me from really developing my skills.  It's all just so much fun.