Jerry Marcantel
07-27-2010, 8:40 AM
Leo, this cactus piece that Allen Nieghbors posted is the Teddy Bear variety, and "Mean" isn't a very good discriptor. "Vicious" is more appropriate.. They can grow up to 8-10' tall, and one trunk I have is about 12" diameter at the ground, and goes to about 4" at the branches, starting about 3' off the ground.. Besides the voids that give the Cholla it's unique look, the trunks aren't always round, which is acceptable to some extent. Sometimes there will be some spongy stuff on the outer edge.
I try to get a piece of trunk that has branches because that's the only place where the center might be solid, but it is fragile.
I live in the middle of a Yucca forest, and about 1/4 of the plants are dead and still standing. The stalks are ok if you get the ones that died at least a year ago... I like the look of the stalks instead of the limbs that most people use out here.
I'm going out to an area that burned a year ago, and see what I can find in burnt Yucca trunks.. I was there 6 months ago, and didn't even consider that there might be something worth turning in the trunks, even though the ones I saw had neat growth patterns and were solid....
Dolly and Kenny Keeton, my intention is to try to fill all the voids with a resin on the piece I'm turning. I have a vaccumn casting machine with a 10" bubble, can pull 28hg?, but I'm at a loss as to how can I get the resin to travel into all the voids without using a gallon of resin for each project, and then, I don't know if the vac can sustain the amount of time it takes for the resin to set...... If anyone has tried this, let me know.
I've attached 4 pictures of a piece I was working on. It's 6" tall, and 5" oval. I lost my center on the bottom when I got into some soft spongy stuff, and from then on it was a problem. In the second picture you can see the hole where the live center was. I'm lucky it didn't explode, but it is a lot tougher than it looks.
I'm going to fill the hole with a solid piece of saguaro rib, thanks to Allen, mostly to get a bite with the chuck, and turn the inside, and do the resin thing mentioned above.
The top is a problem, because after it started wobbling after lossing the tailstock cener, I wanted to see what it might look like after sanding... That's when it started looking pretty bad, because I was using 60 grit, it was cutting that stuff better than my chisels I used for the initial shape. The first pic shows the best wood, and pics 3 & 4 show the irregular trunk...
I try to get a piece of trunk that has branches because that's the only place where the center might be solid, but it is fragile.
I live in the middle of a Yucca forest, and about 1/4 of the plants are dead and still standing. The stalks are ok if you get the ones that died at least a year ago... I like the look of the stalks instead of the limbs that most people use out here.
I'm going out to an area that burned a year ago, and see what I can find in burnt Yucca trunks.. I was there 6 months ago, and didn't even consider that there might be something worth turning in the trunks, even though the ones I saw had neat growth patterns and were solid....
Dolly and Kenny Keeton, my intention is to try to fill all the voids with a resin on the piece I'm turning. I have a vaccumn casting machine with a 10" bubble, can pull 28hg?, but I'm at a loss as to how can I get the resin to travel into all the voids without using a gallon of resin for each project, and then, I don't know if the vac can sustain the amount of time it takes for the resin to set...... If anyone has tried this, let me know.
I've attached 4 pictures of a piece I was working on. It's 6" tall, and 5" oval. I lost my center on the bottom when I got into some soft spongy stuff, and from then on it was a problem. In the second picture you can see the hole where the live center was. I'm lucky it didn't explode, but it is a lot tougher than it looks.
I'm going to fill the hole with a solid piece of saguaro rib, thanks to Allen, mostly to get a bite with the chuck, and turn the inside, and do the resin thing mentioned above.
The top is a problem, because after it started wobbling after lossing the tailstock cener, I wanted to see what it might look like after sanding... That's when it started looking pretty bad, because I was using 60 grit, it was cutting that stuff better than my chisels I used for the initial shape. The first pic shows the best wood, and pics 3 & 4 show the irregular trunk...