Cosmic splatter

BowlsColouringWoodturning
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Woodworking

So I wanted to try turning a nice royal blue bowl with white liming wax. Picked out a chestnut blank, and roughed out the shape, and discovered it had an odd yellow discolouration in the wood that I’d not seen before. Rather unattractive too, not a nice shade of yellow (think bile, not sunshine). And when I stained it…

That’s not the richest of royal blues and it’s going green in places. I tried sanding back and applying a few more layers of stain:

but…

Just not nice. No deep colour, the endgrain’s popping but the rest of the bowl’s not right.
So, if at first you don’t succeed, drop the plan and do something different 😀

Ebonising lacquer all over the bowl (and my wall, my chest drill, me and a bit of the roof.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 1 Comment

Thin walls

BowlsWoodturningWoodworking

So I’d been working on the shape of the bowls I was turning and trying to get the basics down, and a friend who’s been turning a lot longer than I have (hi Tom!) suggested a skill test – turn a thin-walled bowl. I managed to do that on two of my first bowls but I’d not turned anything with thin walls since.

So, trying again a year later with a small chestnut blank.

Nice simple open shape for this, no closed bowls or hollow forms just yet 😀

Using a tenon below the foot because the blank just seemed a few millimetres thick.

Sanded, oiled (just a coat of danish oil), yorkshire grit and hampshire sheen wax. Not doing anything very special because at this point, I expect it to explode mid-hollowing 😀

Reverse it into the chuck, face it off.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 2 Comments

Damn dinosaurs

BowlsWoodturningWoodworking

Was watching Conkers Live this week and Stewart Furini was demonstrating spiralling and texturing (something I’d like to have tooling to do more of…) but at one point during the demo, he’d finished some spiralling and had painted and sanded back the piece and this was the result:

It was quite striking at the time and reminded me of something and it took a few minutes to place it:

I don’t have a spiralling tool but I do have carving tools. So I grabbed a blank…

It’s an odd shape, you’re looking at the bottom of the bowl here – I wanted it to fit my hand and to be a little closed over (turned out, it’s a lot closed over). Printed out the scratch marks from a jpg on the web…

Cut those out with a sharp knife, then put cellotape over the sheet and stuck it to the blank, then cut along the edges of the scratches through the cellotape and tidied up afterwards.… Read the rest

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