Very nice work! I really like the fourth one. What kind of wood did you use?
The fourth one is African Sumac...my neighbor has a huge African Sumac tree that is about half dead. I get all the wood I want from it. The third is lavender cedar...actually Eastern Red Cedar with the lavender color my son's tree produces pretty consistently. I brought home a trunk full of it this summer from CT.
They are all finished with CA/BLO. That is an easy finish for them to do by touch...I put the CA and BLO on a towel for them and they apply it.
When I was at AAW symposium last year, another attendee traded me a bunch of small banksia pods for some mulberry crowns. This week, one of the visually impaired turners made a pen with one. I turned it round and drilled it and tubed it and stabilized it with CA. Then he turned it and filled all the little holes with inlace and ca. He then finished turning it with sandpaper instead of a gouge because it was so thin and fragile. It turned out great and I will get the picture of it Thursday and post it.
These pods are only about 4 inches long and an inch and a half or so in diameter. Perfect for a Sierra/Wall Street pen. He said he picked them up from under a banksia tree in Balboa Park's Australian Garden in San Diego.
