Letter Openers from 250 Year Old Spalted Horse Chestnut

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JohnGreco

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Dec 9, 2011
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740
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Sewell, NJ 08080
I made these as part of a custom order for St. Peter's Church in Philadelphia. Their 250 year old Horse Chestnut tree was taken down last year and I was lucky enough to work with the arborist as it came down, picking some of the better pieces of wood.

After drying it, the spalting really started to show nicely. I stabilized all of these with cactus juice and used tung oil to finish them. I tested my skill using calipers and while I found them good for this particular project, I think I would have too much trouble using them with a finish like CA where there is so much more build up. My hats off to those who do :)

As always, thanks for looking.
 

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Bob Wemm

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Mar 9, 2012
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1,994
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Kalbarri, Western Australia
Yeh, me too. Quite often it is the "story" that makes a beautiful object irresistable.

I entered a natural edge bowl in a show and it sat unsold for 4 days, then I decided to put the "story" next to the piece and it sold in 20 minutes.

Great work. Thanks for showing.

Bob.
 

airborne_r6

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Joined
Oct 28, 2008
Messages
279
Those are really cool. I don't know how everyone else uses their calipers to get an exact fit with a CA finish but I have just started doing it and I turned the blank slightly undersized and applied plenty of CA, making the blank 1-2 thousands oversize. I then adjusted the fit by sanding down the thickness of the CA checking it with calipers, because I had turned the blank undersized I knew I wouldn't sand through the CA.
 
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