burl vase

[cal thelen]

finished this piece up last night. its a piece of yellow birch burl.I am fairly happy with the form but I need some tools for hollowing better. this just has a 1-1/2 hole drilled straight down. has a coat of thick CA on it sanded to 800 grit then two coats of rattle can laquer. mainly went with the CA to fill some cracks. I know pics are lousy but the camera was forgotton up at the cottage and these are cell phone pics. C&C Please, especially different finishing options. Thanks
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[Jeff Fagen]

That's a really nice form an piece of wood.
I use home made hollowing tools.
What part of Wis. are you from?

[Jim Burr]

That is a beautiful piece of wood Cal! IMHO...the base could be refined a bit, but it looks nice over all!

[cal thelen]

thanks guys, Jeff i am in the green bay area, and have a cottage up in the lakewood townsend area. in the summer i am up there alot more than down here.

[Roger Chandler]

pretty nice form on that vase!

[Eric Holmquist]

Nice looking form and wood. The only thing I would suggest would be to use epoxy finish on the inside at least, since it it large enough that someone will fill it with water someday when you aren't looking.

[Chris Burgess]

I am with you on the Hollowing delima. Check out aroundthewoods.com. He has some nice home made hollowing tools w/ detailed instructions and pics. I am actually on hold on my HF's until I get some sort of Hollower in hand.

....almost forgot. Awesome vase. Great wood and form. Would like to see the foot a bit smaller but it looks good no matter what I say. As for finish I cant really help but I feel there is no wrong finish, just differnt methods, as long as it looks the way you want when you are done your good.

[wes murphy]

Great looking vase, almost looks like rock.

[Jeff Nicol]

Cal, This is another Jeff from Packer land, I live in Eau Claire and not far from Jeff Fagen. He stops in the shop now and again for inspiration and information or just to shoot the breeze! The chunk of wood is very nice, and the finish looks pretty good, but I am not that fond of the really glassy looks for most things. Like already said the base could be tweaked a bit to bring the body down to a smaller taper and maybe a bead or an ogee base that stops at the smallest point at a crisp line. This all comes with practice and messing around with different ideas.

Hope you have been able to do some swimming in this heat we have been having, I would be up at a cottage if I had one on a lake too! If you ever get over this way or want to meet up with Jeff, Jeff, and another creeker from Bloomer, Mike Svoma that would be a good thing to set up.

Stay cool and keep spinning wood,

Jeff

[cal thelen]

thanks again everyone for the comments. Jeff I dont get out that way a whole lot I do have some relation there and probably should schedule a visit one of these days. cottage is not on a lake but my pontoon is docked at a resort up there so we do get to get in swimming quite a bit. wish i could of been up there this whole week my air conditioner in the house broke down and is not fixable, all heating air guys here were too swamped to be able to replace it so we just kinda toughed it out.
after i had the vase finished I thought I should of detailed the base a little.