Flower from the rocks

[Pete Copeland]

This is piece made from two inside-out turnings put together as a single flower-like structure: outside is cumala, inside is walnut. The center piece (maple) is modeled after a hibiscus style. The tip (the stigma) is fine-grained feldspar and even finer-grained hornblende minerals glued on (I'm a geologist and have plenty of bottle of different minerals hanging about).

The turning is set in bed of red sandstone.

This is 18 " tall.

216113

The pic doesn't show it very well but the whole thing is in a rectangular frame of white oak.

I didn't document the whole process but here a few pics of the early part of turning the cumala.

216114216115216116216117

comments welcome.

-Pete

[Roger Chandler]

That is really cool Pete!

[John Keeton]

Pete, that is one of the neater turnings I have seen in a while - and, well done! I would be tempted to turn some sort of base for it to sit in and dye it green.

[Baxter Smith]

Very cool Pete! When I first saw the small picture I wasn't that impressed. When I enlarged it and could see the wood and the detail, I really changed my mind! Very nice!

[Steve Vaughan]

I like that! Thanks for sharing this...more food for thought!

[Joe Watson]

18" tall, thats pretty big :) Nice job.
Thanks for the little howto.

Ive seen similar done in the past using a band saw to cut the peddles shape, then put on the lathe to finish there contour... it was a bit of a "rush job" just demonstrating a technique but with similar results. Any reason you did this the way you did ?
_

[Pete Copeland]

Joe,

I didn't use a band saw first because it didn't occur to me but I think I would still do it this way if I did it again. That's 'cause the slow process on the lathe allows one to see the shape evolve as one goes. Also, I would have to cut at an 45° angle to the flat sides of the pieces.

-P

[Steve Schlumpf]

Love the imagination! Also, after seeing your in-process photos, it gave me a better appreciation of size and amount of effort required to turn it!

Pretty cool work! Thanks for sharing!

[Pete Copeland]

Thanks Steve.

With regard to the problem of sensing scale from a photo, this probably qualifies as hi-jacking the thread but since I started it, I feel justified. I didn't take the photo of this work. It was done by the official photographer at my club; I don't have a nice photo set up. But I think in the future, when I do take photos, I'm going to put some sort of scale in the photo.

This happens to me a lot when looking at photos of work here: I get a feel for the piece and an appreciation of the work that went into it and then all of that changes when I bother to read the dimensions some where in the text. I can tell you this thing is 18" tall but I don't think that does the same job as putting it next to something you immediately know how big it is. This could be something as simple and straightforward as a scale with inches and centimeters marked off on it or something else that people immediately know what it is such as a coin or a pencil.

As I mentioned I'm a geologist and when we are in the field taking photos of rocks we often will put our rock hammer in the picture so as to give the viewer and immediate sense of the scale. One advantage of this is that no text need be added (unless you need to know exactly how long the hammer is). Maybe folks could put a bowl gouge next to their turnings for scale.

Thanks again to all who commented on the art. Hope you don't mind my small rant on scales.