Stabilised hybrid box blanks

[George Watkins]

Hello folks

I have been casting for a couple of years now, my biggest passion is making boxes and hybrid box blanks and i normally use the really spiky natural edge Australian burr caps as native u.k burr's are very tricky to get hold of.

On one of my recent trips to buy some logs at a tree surgeons yard I spotted a horse chestnut trunk/butt with lots of burr's on it.


I cut a few inches of the end of the log and it had gone really soft and punky so I asked if i could just cut the burr's off as I figured that they might have stayed a bit firmer.... and he said yes

Unfortunatley the burr's were/are too soft but very very pretty figureing with a mixture of spalting and burr.
I decided to try stabilising and built a vacum chamber and bought some cactus juice from Curtis.

these are some of my first box blanks made with the stabilised burr horse chestnut.













A big thank you to Curtis at Turntex woodowrks for his help and support

 

[lyonsacc]

Those look GREAT!

 

[southernclay]

Beautiful! Great color choices

 

[guylaizure]

How did you go about building your own stabilizing chamber.

 

[SteveG]

Hey George, I am way too old and grumpy to be a groupie, but I am definitely a fan. You just do such great work! I have a few resin/wood box blanks here, just waiting for me to venture in. I have turned one small vessel, but without the "hollow" part, just to get the feel for turning something of the general size and shape. Thanks for the inspiration.

 

[plantman]

Fantastic colors and grain patterns George !! I think that turning them into a larger object than a pen blank add to, and shows off, the beauty of the wood much better. Great find. Jim S

 

[JohnU]

They all look great George! My favorite is the fist one. Great color and character. A nice find put to very good use!

 

[SteveJ]

Very nice job with the colors. How big are the pieces.

 

[robutacion]

Great work George, I'm amazed how that burled wood looks extremely similar to my Tortuosa Willow Burl, if you hadn't shown the trunk and tell us what it is, I would swear those boxes were made with my wood that, is also soft as you pointed out...!

Your new colour mixing style and more solid colours, is something that I'm not sure off but, it may grow on me, I know what you are doing but, I'm yet to be a fan...! one day, though...!:wink::biggrin:

Cheers
George

 

[mark james]

Sorry George, but those really STINK!

The blanks are aweful; the colors are horrible, They have no promise... I'll do you a favor and PM my address and I'll "dispose" of them for you! :biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

(They are really great!)

Have a nice day, Mark

 

[PenPal]

George Incredible devotion pays huge dividends with all you do and say. Thank you so much for sharing with us. I am amazed to say the least mate.

Kind regards Peter.

 

[George Watkins]

Thank you for all of your kind comments

these blanks are approx 2 1/2" wide by 3 7/8" tall - i do make smaller & larger blanks than this but this is my preferred size for boxes.

My chamber is a bit of a long story - but the short version is, I already own a vacum pump as i have a vacum chuck system on my lathe so I bought an acrylic tube and some acrylic sheets and built a chamber, this one didn't work out too good so i then had a welder friend make me a steel chamber, this works great except that i only have a small window to view inside the chamber from the top which means you have to be very careful (especially if the juice level is high) when you initially pull vacum so as not to get any up and into the vacum pumps tube (i will make a catch pot soon) but you do get used to it and it is only for the first few minutes when you have to control the initial bubbling/foaming.