Just messing around - blue pine again

[Doug Herzberg]

I have a new tenant who works at a nursery. He keeps giving us arrangements of annuals in containers. The kind you see at the big box stores for $50 plus. He says he gets them for free at work. I hope it's legitimate and I worry about why we're getting all these flowers. I pray it's not because of something the dog did on the carpet. I was trying to think of something I could get for free that would still be nice as a thank you and that's all the excuse I needed for some shop time.

I tried filling the worm holes with molten solder after a demonstration I saw this week. Those things are like bullets when you get a catch, and they mess up the worm hole when they pull out. I filled the big craters with coffee grounds and CA and left the multiple small tunnels alone. It was a pretty piece of wood, but there is some discoloration on the bottom from the anchor seal. It's pretty clear we're getting the better part of this exchange - the arrangements are beautiful.


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Ponderosa, 8-1/2" x 3-1/2" C&C appreciated, but not necessary. My wife likes this one better than the last. It doesn't look like a salad bowl, says she. I'll probably hit it with some gloss lacquer and be done.

[Brian Kent]

That is marvelous. Good warning about the solder too.

[Pat Scott]

Doug I saw a demo at the Utah Symposium this year by John Wessels of South Africa. He uses pewter and solder to fill voids and do other amazing work. When filling a crack or void, after he melts the solder he puts CA glue around the edge of the crack to help hold the solder in place. When he cuts a ring (like around the edge of a bowl), he cuts it so the sides are dovetailed instead of straight. The bottom of the groove being wider helps lock the solder in place. He also uses 97% tin/3% copper no flux solder.

A worm hole might be too big or have too straight of side walls to hold solder without some extra help? Before applying CA, seal the wood first with Shellac or whatever so the glue doesn't stain the wood. One trick that John Wessels tried (an audience person suggested this and it worked great), was to spray the wood first with Accelerator, and then apply CA. I know that's backwards from how it's normally done, but the Accelerator actually sealed the wood and prevented the CA from staining. Don't worry, it doesn't seal the wood so well that CA won't penetrate.

One of these days I'm going to finish turn that pine that you gave me!

[Doug Herzberg]

Doug I saw a demo at the Utah Symposium this year by John Wessels of South Africa. He uses pewter and solder to fill voids and do other amazing work. When filling a crack or void, after he melts the solder he puts CA glue around the edge of the crack to help hold the solder in place. When he cuts a ring (like around the edge of a bowl), he cuts it so the sides are dovetailed instead of straight. The bottom of the groove being wider helps lock the solder in place. He also uses 97% tin/3% copper no flux solder.

A worm hole might be too big or have too straight of side walls to hold solder without some extra help? Before applying CA, seal the wood first with Shellac or whatever so the glue doesn't stain the wood. One trick that John Wessels tried (an audience person suggested this and it worked great), was to spray the wood first with Accelerator, and then apply CA. I know that's backwards from how it's normally done, but the Accelerator actually sealed the wood and prevented the CA from staining. Don't worry, it doesn't seal the wood so well that CA won't penetrate.

One of these days I'm going to finish turn that pine that you gave me!

Pat, I think the guy I heard attended the same demonstration in Utah. If I heard right, he was pounding the solder into the rings instead of trying to melt it and get it to flow. I knew about the shellac and the CA. I'm guessing the worm holes were too big and too straight sided, as you suggested. The chunks were about the size of a .22 slug, but longer. They looked pretty good until one came out. After that, it was only a matter of time. I have some other wood with more irregular and narrower voids, so I may try it again. The solder I used was 95 tin/5 antimony. I wish I could find some 50/50 lead, but probably not too good if it will have food contact. I understand the stained glass suppliers still have 50/50 and 60/40 lead.

[Pat Scott]

John Wessels did 4 or 5 different demos, teaching something a little bit different each time. I saw two of the rotations. In the first one he cut a small dovetail groove around the rim of a bowl, and a groove around a sphere that were 90 degrees to each other. For all of these grooves he pounded solder into the groove. He was very detailed and precise that the solder he used is 2mm diameter, and the slot should be 1.85mm wide and 1.2mm deep. Basically the slot is not quite as wide as the solder, and the depth of the slot is just a hair more than the center of the solder. These dimensions help hold it in place, and the CA is extra insurance.

The 2nd demo that I attended is where he melted solder into small cracks and voids. He used a small butane or propane torch to drip solder into cracks, and then heated the tip of a small metal spatula and pushed/worked the solder further into the cracks with the hot spatula (which remelted the solder). Really a neat effect, and one that I'm going to try as well.