Hardenfast
29th May 2007, 03:46 PM
Morning all.
I finally decided to have a go at completing a turned piece, rather than just playing with shapes and techniques. Having been inspired by segmented turning generally and some of the magnificent pieces shown here recently, I decided that I would begin with a modest segmented work. I also wanted to use all Aussie dry hardwoods so that I could finish it immediately without any seasoning requirement. I saw a photo of a fairly simple six segment three level bowl and thought that would do as my first ever piece.
But what to use? It needed to have timbers of contrasting colour to make it interesting, but alas, the cupboard was bare.
Or was it? A more detailed search through my demolition pile uncovered an old 75x50 concreter’s peg (complete with concrete) in Sydney Blue Gum. Further searching uncovered a piece of Tallowwood threshold, complete with Lyctus Borer holes and staining. I then pulled out an old section of Alpine Ash door jamb, complete with hinge mortices and original hex head nails. Both the door jamb and threshold were taken from a 100 year old terrace house in Surry Hills during renovation some years ago. Away we go!
I won’t bore you with too many details, but I ran each piece carefully through the Altendorf to rip a few suitable pieces – I didn’t need much. I then cut the various segments on the trusty Makita slide saw ready for the glueing process. I glued the pieces together a layer at a time in between other projects, so it didn’t really take too long at all. I just used the trusty Aquadhere Tradesmans Choice cross linked PVA which is my general adhesive of choice. It grabs fairly quickly and dries in a few hours, and generally works very well for the “rubbed joint” technique without the need for cramping. I thought I had taken a few shots of the glue-up process for WIP but can’t find them. Oh well. I have included a few shots of the finished item herewith.
Man, this stuff was hard!! All of it!! My God!! Anyway, in accordance with advice from the learned assemblage herein I turned the outside first, including some detail to the foot as shown, before turning it around on the patented Leady chuck to attack the inside. I found that a scraper only lasted about 45 seconds on the heavy work before resharpening, so I ended up doing the whole thing with a bowl gouge followed by a light rub with the scraper to smooth off. Plenty of sanding up through the grit ranges (80 to 480) before one coat of some Canauba Wax that I had laying around. I applied the wax before I noticed that it had been modified with a brown tint, but it looks OK – nice gloss. I’ll give it one more light coat of wax to finish. Gonna get me some U-Beaut from The Lumber Bunker for that.
The finished work is around 200mm by 90mm high. Bottom layer of 3x Alpine Ash segments – middle layer of 6x Sydney Blue Gum segments with thin Alpine Ash spacers – top layer of 6x Tallowood segments. You can still see a Lyctus Borer hole and associated staining in the Tallowood. Overall I’m quite happy with it as a first up project, but I don’t think Bill Wyko is under any threat to his mastery of segmenting. Yet.
So what do you think, Gents and Gentresses? Happy to field all comments, criticisms and suggestions.
47093 47094
Thanks. Wayne
I finally decided to have a go at completing a turned piece, rather than just playing with shapes and techniques. Having been inspired by segmented turning generally and some of the magnificent pieces shown here recently, I decided that I would begin with a modest segmented work. I also wanted to use all Aussie dry hardwoods so that I could finish it immediately without any seasoning requirement. I saw a photo of a fairly simple six segment three level bowl and thought that would do as my first ever piece.
But what to use? It needed to have timbers of contrasting colour to make it interesting, but alas, the cupboard was bare.
Or was it? A more detailed search through my demolition pile uncovered an old 75x50 concreter’s peg (complete with concrete) in Sydney Blue Gum. Further searching uncovered a piece of Tallowwood threshold, complete with Lyctus Borer holes and staining. I then pulled out an old section of Alpine Ash door jamb, complete with hinge mortices and original hex head nails. Both the door jamb and threshold were taken from a 100 year old terrace house in Surry Hills during renovation some years ago. Away we go!
I won’t bore you with too many details, but I ran each piece carefully through the Altendorf to rip a few suitable pieces – I didn’t need much. I then cut the various segments on the trusty Makita slide saw ready for the glueing process. I glued the pieces together a layer at a time in between other projects, so it didn’t really take too long at all. I just used the trusty Aquadhere Tradesmans Choice cross linked PVA which is my general adhesive of choice. It grabs fairly quickly and dries in a few hours, and generally works very well for the “rubbed joint” technique without the need for cramping. I thought I had taken a few shots of the glue-up process for WIP but can’t find them. Oh well. I have included a few shots of the finished item herewith.
Man, this stuff was hard!! All of it!! My God!! Anyway, in accordance with advice from the learned assemblage herein I turned the outside first, including some detail to the foot as shown, before turning it around on the patented Leady chuck to attack the inside. I found that a scraper only lasted about 45 seconds on the heavy work before resharpening, so I ended up doing the whole thing with a bowl gouge followed by a light rub with the scraper to smooth off. Plenty of sanding up through the grit ranges (80 to 480) before one coat of some Canauba Wax that I had laying around. I applied the wax before I noticed that it had been modified with a brown tint, but it looks OK – nice gloss. I’ll give it one more light coat of wax to finish. Gonna get me some U-Beaut from The Lumber Bunker for that.
The finished work is around 200mm by 90mm high. Bottom layer of 3x Alpine Ash segments – middle layer of 6x Sydney Blue Gum segments with thin Alpine Ash spacers – top layer of 6x Tallowood segments. You can still see a Lyctus Borer hole and associated staining in the Tallowood. Overall I’m quite happy with it as a first up project, but I don’t think Bill Wyko is under any threat to his mastery of segmenting. Yet.
So what do you think, Gents and Gentresses? Happy to field all comments, criticisms and suggestions.
47093 47094
Thanks. Wayne