dai sensei
9th April 2016, 09:52 AM
A travelling couple asked me to make a pepper grinder out of some nice contrasting sapwood/heartwood log they found up north on their travels, but they needed it in a week. When they came around to show me it was an Acacia of some sort diameter 80-100mm bark included and ~1.3m long. My guess was Boree (Acacia tephrina) from the bark but there are so many Acacias that look similar. Unfortunately it had been down for only a few months so still relatively green.
I told them a pepper grinder from it in the following week was not practical as wood needed to dry and would most likely crack and deform. They decided to buy one of my other pepper grinders for themselves but they still wanted something small from the log to give away in UK where they were travelling to next and left the log behind hoping I could do something with it.
I chopped it into 2 pepper grinder blanks (~400mm long) and 3 trinket box blanks (~150mm long) and sealed the ends. They wanted to show off the contrasting sapwood but I could see where I sliced it the bugs were already well established. I decided to do a small potpourri and proceeded to rough turn one out to put into my dehydrator to get as dry as possible in the timeframe I had.
After sanding one side down through the bark I attached a scrap wood tenon. On beginning to turn I found the sapwood was riddled with worms on that side and mainly sawdust so the blank decided to part ways. The other side didn't look too bad so I took some more slices off one of the other blanks to make a separate base and top then reglued the tenon and new base on.
I used a lot of thin CA trying to stabilise as much as possible whilst rough turning but there were still a lot of holes that I filled with sawdust and thin CA. I then put it in the dehydrator for 80 hours. It didn't crack but did move ~2mm out of round, not unexpected considering the direction it was turned, but still plenty of meat to finish it. Although I was trying to match up the lid and base to the grain of the original blank I wasn't successful, I also didn't do a good job of drilling the holes, so if I had more time I'd do it again.
It is what it is and all I can do with green wood in the timeframe but I'm sure they will be happy. I used a Rose Sheoak seed pod cast in resin I already had as a knob connected glued via a very small tenon. Finished size is dia 60mm and 70mm high plus ball.
I'll soak the remainder in a boron mix to hopefully save what sapwood I can on the remaining blanks.
376277 376276 376278
I told them a pepper grinder from it in the following week was not practical as wood needed to dry and would most likely crack and deform. They decided to buy one of my other pepper grinders for themselves but they still wanted something small from the log to give away in UK where they were travelling to next and left the log behind hoping I could do something with it.
I chopped it into 2 pepper grinder blanks (~400mm long) and 3 trinket box blanks (~150mm long) and sealed the ends. They wanted to show off the contrasting sapwood but I could see where I sliced it the bugs were already well established. I decided to do a small potpourri and proceeded to rough turn one out to put into my dehydrator to get as dry as possible in the timeframe I had.
After sanding one side down through the bark I attached a scrap wood tenon. On beginning to turn I found the sapwood was riddled with worms on that side and mainly sawdust so the blank decided to part ways. The other side didn't look too bad so I took some more slices off one of the other blanks to make a separate base and top then reglued the tenon and new base on.
I used a lot of thin CA trying to stabilise as much as possible whilst rough turning but there were still a lot of holes that I filled with sawdust and thin CA. I then put it in the dehydrator for 80 hours. It didn't crack but did move ~2mm out of round, not unexpected considering the direction it was turned, but still plenty of meat to finish it. Although I was trying to match up the lid and base to the grain of the original blank I wasn't successful, I also didn't do a good job of drilling the holes, so if I had more time I'd do it again.
It is what it is and all I can do with green wood in the timeframe but I'm sure they will be happy. I used a Rose Sheoak seed pod cast in resin I already had as a knob connected glued via a very small tenon. Finished size is dia 60mm and 70mm high plus ball.
I'll soak the remainder in a boron mix to hopefully save what sapwood I can on the remaining blanks.
376277 376276 376278