My first turned bowls for comment

[tekno.mage]

Hi there,

This is my first attempt at posting pictures here, so let's hope it works.

The following are pictures of my first attempts at bowl turning, shown in the order they were turned (during the last month.) All but the elm one were made from wood discovered in the firewood pile. They are all finished with two coats of chestnut woodwax.

First, a small spalted bowl - not sure what the wood is. The wood is pretty but the shape is not so good! Size is about 5" x 2".

Next, a larger one in very spalted (rotten) sycamore. Size is 6.5" x 3.5".

This is a tiny bowl from yew branch wood, size about 2.5" x 1.25". Whilst turning it I found there was a split in the bottom, repaired with superglue.

Ash dish, 7" x 2".

Spalted Oak bowl, 4.5" x 2.75"

Spalted Birch, 4" x 2"

Technical copy-turning challenge to test the Chestnut rainbow range of woodstains. All made of ash, the large black one is 6" x 1.5" and the seven small ones are 3" x 1.5" The seven small bowls are similar to the casual glance, but not as identical as I'd hoped.

Large spalted sycamore bowl. 8" x 3"

Holly dish. 4.5" x 3". Turned green so it's gone a bit oval.

Elm bowl, from a bought blank. 6" x 3".

Finally, a bowl from sycamore crotch wood, about 7" x 3". Unlike the spalted sycamore it was very, very hard & took a lovely finish straight from the tool, so required very little sanding (except for where I had to superglue a crack around a knot. ('')

Your comments on these would be greatly appreciated.

tekno.mage

 

[Blister]

Mmmm , Looks like we have some serious competition here :lol:

Do you give lessons

Very nice work , Good photos and nice and honest .

I am impressed

Look forward to you future postings , and keep up the good work :wink:

 

[Bodrighy]

The first bowl is beech. It often gets that mottled effect when left lying around.

A good selection of shapes there. Though not a fan of coloured wood generally I do like the ones you have here. Enhances the grain and not hides it. Look forward to seeing more

Pete

 

[colin macdiarmid]

excellent work, how do yo apply your stain colour

 

[duncanh]

Nice work and a good variety of shapes. I particularly like the yew one.
A good start after only a month.

 

[matt]

I'm not a wood turner but they all look very well turned to me. My personal preference is for a matt finish.

 

[gaz8521]

They all look great to me, keep up the good work

 

[PAC]

What a great collection! Hope my first bowls turn out as good as these. My fave is the yew one. 8)

 

[tekno.mage]

Wow - thanks for all your kind comments

Thanks to Bodrighy for confirming my suspicions that the first bowl is spalted beech. I thought it probably was but as all our firewood comes from the trees around the farm and there are no obvious beech trees I wasn't sure.

As to how I applied the stain; I finished the items by sanding through the grades 120 to 1200 grit which left the wood looking very polished. I didn't use any sanding sealer. I left the bowl on the lathe, then I painted the neat stain onto the bare polished wood with a small soft brush, working it in well, after a couple of minutes when the first coat didn't look wet anymore I applied a second coat of stain, then immediately wiped off the excess with a paper towel until there were no more wet patches, then I turned on the lathe and burnished off the rest of the excess stain hard with a clean paper towel - it is this final process that removes any blotchiness and reveals where the stain had taken darker on the open grain of the ash. Once that stain was properly dry I applied two coats of wood wax and burnished it on the lathe.

This process may only work on ash - I've not yet tried it on other woods. I found that two coats of stain were really necessary for the darker colours (black, red, dark blue & purple) otherwise you get a very pastel effect with bright grain which didn't look good. If you don't burnish off the excess stain the effect is much brighter overall but rather patchy and you can't see the figure of the grain so well.

If it all goes wrong (which my red one did initially as I left the second coat to dry too long before burnishing off) all is not lost. Firm application of a green scotchbright pad removed all the patchy areas of stain very quickly allowing me to correct the problem by refinishing with 1200 grit and reapplying the stain properly. The yellow and orange colours are far less critical at the burnishing stage as they don't seem to go blotchy on ash if over-applied, probably because they are paler colours.

All the colours accentuate imperfections in the finish - so you have to be very careful to inspect for odd sanding scratches that may have been missed before applying it.

I've not yet experimented with matt finishes, but I've bought a small tin of tung oil to try. I must admit the speed of using woodwax appeals, and from what I've read about using oils it's a longer process, with the added hazard of the oily rags! Any suggestions of tips on getting a nice matt finish would be appreciated.

tekno.mage

 

[cornucopia]

hello, some promising pieces here

lemon oil is the easiest oil to use and gives a completley matt finish- simply wipe on with a rag or brush and leave it to dry.

I disagree with the first bowl being beech :roll: I am 99% sure its birch as beech will not spalt like that but i have seen loads of birch do it.

good work

 

[Paul.J]

Very nice selection TM for your first attempts at bowl turning :shock:
They all look nicely finished with nice shape
I also thought the first one was Beech as Pete,(Bodrighy) i think as put very similar looking pieces on which were Beech :?: Looks very efeective whatever it is though.

 

[PowerTool]

Great selection of work,and nice to see so much timber being given a second chance

Andrew

 

[shedhead]

When you say burnish what did you use, shavings or paper towel?
Your work is very good. You have come on well in 1 month. I like colouring wood. Is the dye new?

 

[tekno.mage]

When you say burnish what did you use, shavings or paper towel?
Your work is very good. You have come on well in 1 month. I like colouring wood. Is the dye new?

I burnish the stain with a paper towel (actually the blue stuff that comes in big rolls for workshop use)

The dyes I used are the Chestnut "rainbow" range of spirit dyes.

tekno.mage

 

[Bodrighy]

I disagree with the first bowl being beech :roll: I am 99% sure its birch as beech will not spalt like that but i have seen loads of birch do it.

Oh yes it does....these are all from a beech tree that cut up myself. It was 50' tall, had a trunk girth of 4'6" and had been down for two years before I got to it. Definitely a beech tree


They are apparently affected by different fungi thus giving different effects. The normal thread look is only one of a number of different types of spalting

Pete

 

[cornucopia]

I understand that diffrent fungi prodouce diffrent results, maybe it is beech :?: ,but it just doesnt look right to me.
just one of the many joys of wood

 

[CHJ]

Ash can also have similar markings, I guess main difference between the two woods when coloured/degraded to this extent would be in the closeness of the rings being tighter in Beech than Ash. See here, rows 5-6-7-8 and Here, row 2-3. These specimens came from a mixed woodland containing predominantly Beech and were infected before felling.

Back to the basic thread, very good pieces for starters tekno.mage, your attention to surface finish has hit the main criteria right on the button, seeing the need for finish detail let alone mastering it early on is something that will never fail to gain acknowledgement and admiration from others.

 

[tekno.mage]

Ash can also have similar markings, I guess main difference between the two woods when coloured/degraded to this extent would be in the closeness of the rings being tighter in Beech than Ash. See here, rows 5-6-7-8 and Here, row 2-3. These specimens came from a mixed woodland containing predominantly Beech and were infected before felling.

Back to the basic thread, very good pieces for starters tekno.mage, your attention to surface finish has hit the main criteria right on the button, seeing the need for finish detail let alone mastering it early on is something that will never fail to gain acknowledgement and admiration from others.

I should perhaps say that my spalted bowl that might be beech or birch is much pinker in real life than in the photo. The wood it came from was very well dried out & seasoned and I was unable to identify it positively from the bark but there are far more birch trees around here (mostly downy birch and hybrids) than beech trees.

I like the spalted ash examples in your links - I have plenty of ash in the firewood pile, but none of it is spalted.

Thank you for your kind comments about my finishing. One of the things I like about turning is making tatty old bit of firewood into something beautiful and useful, and I love the way the patterns of grain in the wood are revealed as you turn it, and the almost polished surface produced by the final 1200 grit paper. I don't enjoy actually *doing* the finish sanding (it's boring compared with doing the turning) but the results are worth it - and I do far less sanding now than I did on my first couple of bowls!

tekno.mage

 

[user 5053]

Quite nice as a first attempt but lacking a little form and shape.

 

[loz]

Quite nice as a first attempt but lacking a little form and shape.

:shock: :shock: :shock:

I thought they were fantastic, LOve the cluster of coloured matching 7 small bowls, - would be a great gift .

Well done !!!