karlkuehn
Banned
Hot on the trail of all you guys, I'm slowly catching up. Here's what I've been quietly working on for the past couple of weeks.
I've been busy, quietly building up my shop and tools and such. Not had much time to post or turn pens, but I'm getting back in the swing soon, I guess!
I've got all that box elder wood from the tree that came down in the backyard, and one of the bigger burls about halfway up was riddled with worms, ants, spiders, you name it, so there's lots of trauma to the burl, which translates into lots of bright red flame color and figuration in a box elder tree.
But with all the holes, it'd take gallons of CA to stabilize it on the lathe one pen at a time. I have tons of this wood, most of it is way prettier than what's below, but for the first try, I figured I'd use up some of the plain jane stuff so I didn't lose anything good.
So, following Curtis Seebeck's 'Worthless Wood Blanks' (http://builtbydoc.com/WorthlessWoodBlanks.pdf), and stevers 'How to build the Harbor Freight Pressure/Vacuum Pot' tutorials, I've built one of the Harbor Freight pots, and am now figuring out the best way to use resin to stabilize, color and fill the voids and inclusions in this otherwise stunning wood.
I cast my first blanks last night, and couldn't wait to de-gas the pot this morning and see what happened. Unfortunately, I misjudged the amount of resin I would need to totally fill everything, so I need to mix up one more batch, but here's some pictures of what I have so far. All of this will go into a tutorial/chronical text later, but for now, here's a sneak peek for you:
Wormy/Burly Box Elder blanks
In the casting dish
After the first cast, here's the results
The bottom, which is what the top should look like in a little while.
So now I need to add one more layer to the top and pressure it down again. I used micro-milled mica pearl pigment in clear casting resin. I have some Alumilite coming with dyes and metal powders to play with, but for now I figured I'd work out the kinks with some of my old resin I've had sitting around.
I think these are going to turn out really well for a first pass. I just hope the resin got all the way inside the wormholes. I pressurized them to 55 pounds. They sure are heavy! Gah. I'm going to paint the insides of the blanks before epoxying in the tubes to hide the brass and show off the pearl. First though, I need to run them through the bandsaw!
I've been busy, quietly building up my shop and tools and such. Not had much time to post or turn pens, but I'm getting back in the swing soon, I guess!
I've got all that box elder wood from the tree that came down in the backyard, and one of the bigger burls about halfway up was riddled with worms, ants, spiders, you name it, so there's lots of trauma to the burl, which translates into lots of bright red flame color and figuration in a box elder tree.
But with all the holes, it'd take gallons of CA to stabilize it on the lathe one pen at a time. I have tons of this wood, most of it is way prettier than what's below, but for the first try, I figured I'd use up some of the plain jane stuff so I didn't lose anything good.
So, following Curtis Seebeck's 'Worthless Wood Blanks' (http://builtbydoc.com/WorthlessWoodBlanks.pdf), and stevers 'How to build the Harbor Freight Pressure/Vacuum Pot' tutorials, I've built one of the Harbor Freight pots, and am now figuring out the best way to use resin to stabilize, color and fill the voids and inclusions in this otherwise stunning wood.
I cast my first blanks last night, and couldn't wait to de-gas the pot this morning and see what happened. Unfortunately, I misjudged the amount of resin I would need to totally fill everything, so I need to mix up one more batch, but here's some pictures of what I have so far. All of this will go into a tutorial/chronical text later, but for now, here's a sneak peek for you:
Wormy/Burly Box Elder blanks
In the casting dish
After the first cast, here's the results
The bottom, which is what the top should look like in a little while.
So now I need to add one more layer to the top and pressure it down again. I used micro-milled mica pearl pigment in clear casting resin. I have some Alumilite coming with dyes and metal powders to play with, but for now I figured I'd work out the kinks with some of my old resin I've had sitting around.
I think these are going to turn out really well for a first pass. I just hope the resin got all the way inside the wormholes. I pressurized them to 55 pounds. They sure are heavy! Gah. I'm going to paint the insides of the blanks before epoxying in the tubes to hide the brass and show off the pearl. First though, I need to run them through the bandsaw!
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