Bottle Stoppers

[Rich Aldrich]

Three bottle Stoppers made of dyed maple or birch laminated. The stoppers are Niles 301. The laminated dyed wood is no longer available from this source because the plant burned down late last year. The layers are about 1/16" thick. I am looking into making my own laminated pieces.

[Robert Willing]

Great looking stopper, and just think no finish required with dyamond wood. You may try Hut products but you will need to call him and see what he has remaining. He may still have some colorwood but you will need to make the phone call. I am still getting some quantities of what I need from what he has left. I have just made some goose calls with dyamond wood and will post as soon as I finish making more calls.

Here is another source but I am told they will not have a supply until December 2015 it is called "spectraply". They also carry Dymalux which is better than dyamond wood but it is too costly for me.

http://www.cousineauwoodproducts.com/

[Dok Yager]

Nice stoppers Rich. I too use Niles stoppers for all mine. I have tried lots and lots of different woods and some laminates as well. I really like doing the "ball" or round tops. Tried some cocobolo and some Texas ebony that turned out nice. Keep up the nice work.

[John K Jordan]

I am looking into making my own laminated pieces.

I stopped in to see Frank Penta recently, in Chapel Hill NC. ( http://www.woodspriteturnings.com/sites/penta/ ) Frank is an impressive turner and teacher, often teaching at John C Campbell. He has specialized in large platters but lately he has been doing a LOT of lamination for turnings, plates, boxes, bowls, things large and small. Frank resaws a variety of species, sands flat with a Performax drum sander, then assembles and glues and presses into turning blanks. One room in his shop appears to be used mostly for laminating!

Frank uses Tightbond III glue for the working time and pauses assembly in 15 minutes whether finished or not, presses the stack until cured, then continues adding laminations if necessary to build up the blank. He likes this press (I purchased one from Amazon for my own laminations):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00012X504

i have started playing with laminations, but don't yet have much to show. I did follow Frank's advice for this glue-up, an end grain to end grain blank with a thin layer of side grain wood between the layers. (This is cherry with a softer basswood band in the middle for chip carving.) I used my drum sander and disk sander to flatten the pieces. This was before I got the press so I used a big c-clamp and left it tight overnight for good measure.

[Billy Tallant]

Very nice looking stoppers!