End grain teak bowl - small

[Robert Hayward]

What to do on a rare rainy summer day in Florida ? Not our usual afternoon thunderstorm, but rain all afternoon. I had a small piece of 16/4 teak I cut off the end of a mallet I turned the other day. This is what I ended up with.

I have four seven foot long pieces of 4" X 4" teak and have been itching to turn something since last spring when I got the teak. A woodworkers mallet was my first try and this little bowl is the second attempt. The teak is soft compared to my usual Laurel or Live oaks. Grain tearout was a real challenge for both projects. On this bowl I ended up using a 100 grit gouge to get rid of the last of the tearout. I would have run out of wood and ended up with nothing but a pile of shavings otherwise.

Finish is Kusmi golden button shellac and JPW.

[Steve Nix]

Got a pic of the 100 grit gouge? I use a 80 grit gouge some days.. lol

[Robert Hayward]

The wood was soft. 100 ate it up easily. Ever used 36g ? That stuff leaves marks like the wood was dragged behind a car on asphalt.

[John K Jordan]

What to do on a rare rainy summer day in Florida ? Not our usual afternoon thunderstorm, but rain all afternoon. I had a small piece of 16/4 teak I cut off the end of a mallet I turned the other day. This is what I ended up with.

I have four seven foot long pieces of 4" X 4" teak and have been itching to turn something since last spring when I got the teak. A woodworkers mallet was my first try and this little bowl is the second attempt. The teak is soft compared to my usual Laurel or Live oaks. Grain tearout was a real challenge for both projects. On this bowl I ended up using a 100 grit gouge to get rid of the last of the tearout. I would have run out of wood and ended up with nothing but a pile of shavings otherwise.


That has some terrific figure and color! I'll bet that teak would make some amazing lidded boxes too.

I'll tell you what I usually use instead of the sandpaper on tearout - hand scrapers. For years I've used these to remove ripples and tearout (usually after sanding sealer):

366846

I usually scrape downhill with the grain, sometimes with water or oil to soften the wood a bit, sometimes not. Whatever works. Lately I bought a set of scrapers sold by Stewart Macdonald to musical instrument makers. I like these better than the card scrapers. http://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/Types_of_Tools/Scrapers/StewMac_Ultimate_Scraper.html I used the two rounded ones just last week to clean up some terrible tearout 5-1/2" deep in the bottom of a turning with a 5-1/2" opening - worked amazingly well. I also use them to remove ripples deep inside and on the wings of squarish platters and such where turning "air" almost always introduces some unevenness. I don't think I've ever had to use paper coarser than 220 or maybe 180 after cleaning up with hand scrapers.

Another tearout trick I learned recently which works well sometimes - turner John Lucas showed me how he wet sands with CA glue on pesky tearout. He adds a little thin CA to a small piece of sandpaper and while sanding the sawdust mixes with the glue and solidifies in the torn grain voids. (You do have convince the CA not to bond fingers to sandpaper!) I've tried this a couple of times with kind of punky wood that just laughed in the face of a razor-sharp gouge. It made the tearout disappear and left a very smooth surface. If not, the 80 grit gouge is still there.

JKJ

[Reed Gray]

I would guess that it is plantation teak rather than old growth teak, which is very hard. Still pretty...

robo hippy

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I have turned different pieces from Teak, larger (13 ½”) and smaller from both Burma and India Teak, it is not a hard wood (half the weight of Sugar Maple) but very durable and used for centuries in boat building for that reason, of course as with lots of other woods we get other woods that are called Teak which it isn’t, like Afro Teak or Brazilian Teak etc..

Some of the Teak is reported to have silica in it, though I have never had a problem with it in the wild grown Teak I turned.

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[Louis Harvill]

Wow! You did good!

[Damon McLaughlin]

Very nice, the colors and form are quite pleasing.

[Chris Hachet]

Very nice, the colors and form are quite pleasing.Agreed, this is nice work!

[Robert Hayward]

This is plantation Teak from South America. Look at the first bowl picture, the growth rings are about 1/2" apart. Definitely not old growth. Supposedly just as long lasting and durable as Teak from its native places. I have no plans to use it for fence posts and am not building a boat, so its durability is not important to me.