robutacion
Member
Hi Folks,
I have had this idea for a very long time because I produce a lot more of it than I ever will be able to use however, every suitable piece is trimmed to size and put aside so, nothing goes to waste.
In our days, casting wood blanks and other blanks has become a great experience for so many people, including a large number of IAP members that, took on the task with open arms, some are having better results than others many times due to lack of suitable woods/pieces for the task, which is most disappointing.
I have started casting long ago and since, I have helped many folks starting casting for themselves, I don't see it as working against me because it will compromise my sales of cast blanks, I don't really care about that, I prefer to stop casting when the interest is no longer there, on the other hand, there will always those that are just starting and that would never attempt to spend the money to invest on casting equipment and materials until they are satisfied that, they want to pursue pens and blanks making, for whatever the reasons.
With that said and as I mention previously, there are I believe a number of you that simply has no access of decent casting wood pieces and that is when I would come in, supplying those clean pieces.
I mean clean pieces because, freight/shipping is quite expensive and therefore I always aim to the best cost effective way to get things to you guys so, I would supply (unless otherwise requested) pieces of wood that have been trimmed to allow a general cast blank of 21 or 22mm square x 130mm long some of course, you can cast longer by adding multiple suitable pieces of the same wood.
These pieces are lightweight (most of them) so, I'm considering to put a few half a kilo to a 1kilo boxes together that can be filled with all of the same material or a mix.
Of some of the possibilities, 2 of which I have far too much of it are the beautiful Colonial Red gum burl pieces and the more recently acquired the Peppercorn tree burl, this is also a beautiful casting burl and is very light weight.
I have an issue with the Peppercorn burl I got, I don't have the space to put it all under cover and this burl has been considerably weathered from years in the weather. This is not all a negative as you may think, in fact, this burl is quite useless when green because it needs to dry to complete the nature cycle of natural decomposition which in this burl means, beautiful openings and lots of areas where the wood turn into a mass of spalted material.
Not all pieces require stabilizing but some of the most spalted, it would certainly improve its workability but having its harden before casting, as a matter of principle, I don't cast any wood without have it properly stabilized before end.
These boxes will be fairly inexpensive considering what you can do with them, there is no waste, every piece has been trimmed to general pen sizes.
I have plenty ready but not sorted or photographed, I started this thread after spending the last 2 afternoons processing one of the large pieces of the Peppercorn burl I brought home and to be fairly honest, the large percentage of these large pieces of old burl would be pretty much useless for anything else than small pieces like pen blanks, there is I believe about 10% of it that I can salvage as medium size bowl blanks, the biggest I processed to stabilized is about 1 cubic feet but most are smaller than that.
I will also turn a few items with this burl to show you how well it is suitable for many types of turning pieces .
I will leave you with some of the pics I already have of this burl, some raw, some stabilized, some soft and some hard some with no holes and some from the very outer part of the burl where all the natural holes are, after that, I will take some pics of the ready casting materials I have and post it here for you all to see and possibly make some orders.
Let me know if you are interested, I will provide prices very soon...!
Thank you,
Cheers
George
I have had this idea for a very long time because I produce a lot more of it than I ever will be able to use however, every suitable piece is trimmed to size and put aside so, nothing goes to waste.
In our days, casting wood blanks and other blanks has become a great experience for so many people, including a large number of IAP members that, took on the task with open arms, some are having better results than others many times due to lack of suitable woods/pieces for the task, which is most disappointing.
I have started casting long ago and since, I have helped many folks starting casting for themselves, I don't see it as working against me because it will compromise my sales of cast blanks, I don't really care about that, I prefer to stop casting when the interest is no longer there, on the other hand, there will always those that are just starting and that would never attempt to spend the money to invest on casting equipment and materials until they are satisfied that, they want to pursue pens and blanks making, for whatever the reasons.
With that said and as I mention previously, there are I believe a number of you that simply has no access of decent casting wood pieces and that is when I would come in, supplying those clean pieces.
I mean clean pieces because, freight/shipping is quite expensive and therefore I always aim to the best cost effective way to get things to you guys so, I would supply (unless otherwise requested) pieces of wood that have been trimmed to allow a general cast blank of 21 or 22mm square x 130mm long some of course, you can cast longer by adding multiple suitable pieces of the same wood.
These pieces are lightweight (most of them) so, I'm considering to put a few half a kilo to a 1kilo boxes together that can be filled with all of the same material or a mix.
Of some of the possibilities, 2 of which I have far too much of it are the beautiful Colonial Red gum burl pieces and the more recently acquired the Peppercorn tree burl, this is also a beautiful casting burl and is very light weight.
I have an issue with the Peppercorn burl I got, I don't have the space to put it all under cover and this burl has been considerably weathered from years in the weather. This is not all a negative as you may think, in fact, this burl is quite useless when green because it needs to dry to complete the nature cycle of natural decomposition which in this burl means, beautiful openings and lots of areas where the wood turn into a mass of spalted material.
Not all pieces require stabilizing but some of the most spalted, it would certainly improve its workability but having its harden before casting, as a matter of principle, I don't cast any wood without have it properly stabilized before end.
These boxes will be fairly inexpensive considering what you can do with them, there is no waste, every piece has been trimmed to general pen sizes.
I have plenty ready but not sorted or photographed, I started this thread after spending the last 2 afternoons processing one of the large pieces of the Peppercorn burl I brought home and to be fairly honest, the large percentage of these large pieces of old burl would be pretty much useless for anything else than small pieces like pen blanks, there is I believe about 10% of it that I can salvage as medium size bowl blanks, the biggest I processed to stabilized is about 1 cubic feet but most are smaller than that.
I will also turn a few items with this burl to show you how well it is suitable for many types of turning pieces .
I will leave you with some of the pics I already have of this burl, some raw, some stabilized, some soft and some hard some with no holes and some from the very outer part of the burl where all the natural holes are, after that, I will take some pics of the ready casting materials I have and post it here for you all to see and possibly make some orders.
Let me know if you are interested, I will provide prices very soon...!
Thank you,
Cheers
George
:biggrin:
