Sunday 16 October 2011

Latest wood turning project ... ...

Apologies if you've been waiting for a post, seems we are currently in a situation where there really aren't enough hours in a day (or days in a week for that matter)

Due to other things I haven't been able to spend as much time at my lathe as I would like, although I'm hoping to sort that out soon.

I have managed to experiment further with the cypress I've recently acquired, I have just the other day got a load more of this type of wood, which to be honest I'm liking a lot, it's easy to work with and even though it's very green I seem to be having a lot less trouble with it in terms of warping and such like.

Latest piece -

Do you want soldiers with that ?


Yes I've made an egg, an egg box actually, again this is made from the cypress I got through freecycle, I'm going to get some more of this, but much larger pieces which I'm hoping to make some much larger pieces from, and perhaps some bowls.

Like most of the boxes / pots I make this is turned from one piece of wood, and I've applied the same logic to turning this as I did with the other cypress pot, that being I turned it a little (roughed it out) and then left it for a week or so then finished it off, this approach seems to be working, but I need to test it on some of the more difficult wood I have, mainly the fruit wood.

This piece isn't perfect, there are some small cracks on the top part (the egg) these I can easily turn out as they aren't very deep, this usually happens around knots in wood, least it does for me.

Some more pictures - 

Lid off, you can see the small cracks in the egg part.
Not as bad as they look.


I have been in some what of a dilemma about these cracks, I have to admit I quite like them, they seem to fit seeing as it's meant to be an egg, so I've wondered about making a small feature of them, however this may not be to everyone's liking so I'm not sure whether to as I intend to sell the piece in my shop, technically it's probably not a good idea to sell things with cracks in them, these won't get any worse, but as I said some people may take a dim view of the box being for sale with defects, I guess if I do decide to leave it as is and put it in my shop I'll find out.

The next thing I'm going to try with this wood is turning it end grain on, mainly to see what patterns appear as often a dull looking piece of wood yields some very interesting features when turned slightly differently, so keep a look out for that.

A few more pictures showing the grain -

The grain seems to suit designs like this.

I may turn the egg part from a different wood next time.

Thanks for reading.



1 comment:

  1. I'd make a feature of them, label the object as cracked, and maybe try to accentuate them even.


    10/10 from my eldest, but a little less from me. It's great craftsmanship, but I like my wood things really rough right now, and darker. :)

    I'd definitely try another with different wood, or maybe carve or burn some pattern into it?

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