wood turning
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Caring for your wood.
Wood finish. What I use and how you can maintain it. My primary purpose of putting a wood finish is to seal the pores to keep it clean. But which particular finish depends on the purpose the wood will be used. I prefer oils and waxes which will sink into the wood rather than varnishes and paints which sit on the surface. I also prefer a satin finish rather than gloss. Food safe finish. The finish I use on all the plates and bowls I make primarily for everyday food use is flaxseed/linseed oil. This is a traditional ‘drying’ oil used for wood, either on its own as an oil or combined…
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Spalted woods. Which wood to spalt?
Which wood to spalt? Beech is by far the easiest wood to spalt well. It almost always ends up with black line and distinctly different colours. This bowl shows only one area left with the wood in its natural state. All the rest has been affected by fungi. I don’t know how many different ones. It was at the very limit of having enough structural integrity to work. Even with the gauge straight off the grinder it was difficult not to get tear out on the end grain. This wood had been left outside in all weathers for a year and a few months. It was a large tree and…
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Spalted Wood. How wood spalts.
Spalted wood. Spalted wood is where fungus or more usually several different fungi have been introduced to the wood. This is most commonly after the tree has been felled but sometimes it is a fungus which has killed the tree so the timber has already been spalted. Spalted wood can be created deliberately or can occur by accident as I have found out several times over the years! Spalted wood can be created as easily as:- Leaving the freshly sawn wood out in the weather, popping it into a plastic bag or burying the wood in wood shavings. However, knowing when the wood will be spalted enough to work but…
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Turned Miniature Eisteddfod Chair
Having had the honour to be commissioned again to make a miniature chair for Cymdeithas Ceredigion‘s 2016 Eisteddfod I decided to put my all into making a turned miniature chair. Since turning is my main medium for working with wood it made sense to explore this method to make the chair. I’ve made chairs for Cymdeithas Ceredigion before, both a full size chair and two miniature chairs, however I used more traditional methods for these chairs. (The 2015 miniature chair, described here and here, was made out of Laburnum and the 2014 was made of Elm.) I had a prototype turned chair floating around the workshop which I’d made a…
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Tale of an Ash Tree
My work often comes from trees where I know some of the story behind the wood. None more so than one particular Ash tree. There are so many different threads of different stories that I see when I look at a piece from this tree. Once upon a time an Ash seed rooted itself in just the wrong place, on a river bank where there was almost no soil and under a cliff so there was almost no sun either. For a hundred and fifty years and more the Ash tree grew tall and thin as she stretched to reach more light, developing a buttress on one side to hold…
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Wood Turning -Setting Up My Workshop 1
My Wood Turning Workshop Starts to Take Shape Some months ago I was visiting Roni and, as usual, could not wait to do a bit more wood turning. There I was turning a rather nice, if I do say so myself, mushroom when Roni asked why I did not set up my own workshop at home? I had thought about it before and dismissed it on a couple of grounds. Firstly there was the cost. Wood turning is not a cheap thing to set up. There is a lot of necessary kit. A lathe for a start, have you seen how much those things cost!? Then there is extraction…
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Marketing Woodturning
I have been woodturning for ten years now. In fact I even did a little before that, about fifteen years ago. However, most of this time I have also been a carer so not only was my time limited but also I never knew if I would have to drop everything else for a while if the person I was looking after needed more help. I therefore deliberately kept a low profile with the woodturning. I put my work into local shops and galleries and left them to sell on my behalf. I am grateful for this service. I do not begrudge shops their commission, I am a firm believer…
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Cankered Ash
Cankered Ash is a beautiful wood. Ash is so often beautiful anyway but Cankered Ash is wonderful. It has all the sorts of things I really enjoy with wood. It is unpredictable and moves after it has been turned – even if it is turned quite dry but especially if it is turned fresh. There must be a lot of stresses in it. It often has a particularly good colour and sheen to it, rich and deep. And, of course, it also has holes in it! Quite why they are appealing I don’t know but it isn’t only me. It seems that the more holes there are in a piece…
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Turning Mushrooms
Phil came to stay last weekend. Having taken to wood turning like a duck to water when he first tried, naturally he wanted to have a go again. (I, of course, expect everyone who tries their hand at turning to love it but suprisingly not everyone does.) When I asked Phil what he’d like to turn he said “mushrooms and earrings”. I was delighted at this. Something a bit different – where he could choose the design as they weren’t something I’d been making for ten years unlike the bowls. Years ago I’d made mushroom shaped nightlights and boxes where the top was the cap of the mushroom but I’d…
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My Big Lathe
This is my favourite lathe and was in fact the first lathe that I bought though I didn’t use it straight away. I can turn up to 24″ diameter on this lathe. I love the history associated with this lathe. It started life as a metal spinning lathe – something I’d never even heard of when I first had the lathe. It was in a poor state and I had to derust then paint it. There was no tool rest and when I was asking Huw to make one for me I really didn’t know what I needed. This tool rest can be moved at a couple of different points…