Finished project — well almost. I wanted to spray and nice lacquer finish on it but it kept threatening to rain all day so I abandoned that plan. On this piece I had to work within the confines of the chunk of wood I was turning and came up with this shape. The sap wood was real soft so I epoxied a piece of ash to the bottom in order to chuck it up and dyed it black just for an accent. I was  going to do a black lid to compliment that but the sycamore looked so good natural that I decided to leave it. Of course I had to bring the walnut up to the spindle just for balance.

I tried an oak bowl done black with gold leaf paint on it and wiped the paint off leaving the gold down in the grain. It looked spectacular but was just an old junk bowl so I had envisioned doing this piece using that technique — until I saw how it looked natural and decided to leave it that way. The grain was way too pretty to cover up and the knot going through was a definite plus for the interest value of the piece. I believe this is a piece of pecan wood which we had trimmed off a tree a few years ago and not the oak I had suspected before I took a tool to it. No, I haven’t given up on color, in fact I did another one this weekend with nice shades of green and blue which was rather soothing to look at. I still need to complete the lid and lacquer work on it before posting.

This lidded container is turned from sycamore and left natural. The only concession was to blacken the rim which looks very dramatic against the start lightness of the vessel. The lid is turned from teak, which I don’t like to turn but I had some to get rid of and this was a good place to use it. The spindle was a piece of walnut but I also blackened the base of the spindle to complement the black rim of the vessel. There is a light coat of shellac as a sanding sealer and then the piece was waxed to a satin sheen.

Today I am off to visit with the apothecary and I was able to get this piece done. It is a small piece of that spalted oak and I didn’t want to waste it so I glued it to a chunk o’ cherry and went at it. There is a band of Seattle’s Best #5 (dark roast coffee) separating the cherry from the oak and it looked suspiciously like walnut so I put a walnut spindle on to match. I do wish I had also but one of those bands at the top where the cherry lid meets but I just ran out of time — funny how that happens even when you have nothing but time but I had another bowl I wanted to finish coloring to take with me and I had to make a choice.

As promised, the willow pot that got colored. Actually it got recolored, the first dye job was too much of a bright red and looked a bit garish or maybe juvenile. Unfortunately I didn’t think of that until I already had a couple of coats of lacquer on it. I sanded back the lacquer a bit and then wiped down with lacquer thinner and rubbed alcohol based blue indigo dye on hoping to get a shade of purple. What I actually got was another smoky ember effect which honestly looks better than purple would have. Not sure about the lid yet — I’ll have to look at it a few more days yet. Maybe a natural wood wood be better.

I have so many projects going on at once that sometimes I lose track of what I had in mind for a certain piece. I feel driven like I’m just on a long weekend and need to get as much as I can in before going back to work. Eventually I’ll accept that every day is a weekend and I can relax a bit more.

Well, it is actually more of that cedar. I wanted to see how it would take dye — and it takes it fine. I have found some wood very hard to dye but cedar isn’t one of them obviously. I left the inside unfinished because some people like that cedar smell and I shouldn’t get any moths in there. The lid is mahogany and the spindle is a piece of ash dyed with ink. Diameter is about 7″ and height about 8″ to the top of the spindle. About 8 coats of lacquer — this one needed to shine to bring out that flame look.

I was running short on wood inside the shop and it was way too cold to be outside with the chainsaw so I worked with what I could find. This piece of walnut evolved after cutting away all the junk and working within the bounds of the shape available. There were some cracks in it but I decided to abandon the CA glue fix as it tends to stain the wood. instead, I resorted to an old woodworking trick and used white glue. I just put glue in the crack and sanded enough to get it to turn into a wood paste. Barely visible at this point. To deal with the cracks on the rim I picked up a cut off ash ring from an old project that just happened to be the right size (how often would that happen?). The lid is a piece of mahogany from an old plaque. Waste not want not.