Requesting advice on hickory hollow-form blank

[Robert Marshall]

I roughed out this piece of hickory today, to make into a hollow-form (vase). I mounted it with the tree's centerline transverse to the lathe spindle, so the heartwood shows up on opposite sides of the vase.

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The wood is a couple of years old, and has mostly been sitting outside my shop, gaining "character." It is highly spalted, bug-eaten, soft on the outside inch or two but still mostly firm on the inside. There are some bark inclusions, which contain some pockets of punky wood. I want to keep this rustic look, but I don't want the thing coming apart as it gets hollowed out.

I'm considering making up some epoxy-coffee grounds mixture, and filling these larger holes, before doing the hollowing. My hope is that this will hold the bark inclusions together. What do you think of that idea, and if you have a better one, please share.

Thanks.

[Fred Belknap]

Robert I think your idea is pretty good. You might have to use some more as it will probably crack where the pith is in the sidewall. Maybe not. Coffee grounds looks like they would match pretty good, I sometime get the sawdust out of the bottom of my bandsaw to mix with the epoxy.

[David Delo]

Added precaution might be to wrap it with painters tape until you can determine exactly how sound the wood is inside while your hollowing.

[Brice Rogers]

David's suggestion is good. I will sometimes use painters tape but if I want to be safer, I'll wrap it with filament tape (the stuff that has fiberglass ? strands in it).

I've used coffee grounds and epoxy but I find that it doesn't penetrate very well. It seems to only penetrate as deep as you can "push" it. CA really penetrates well but is brittle. To get epoxy to be a bit more runny (low viscosity) you can add a little acetone. But that will also slow down the reaction. Eventually after a few hours or days it'll get hard. I wonder if a person used finely ground instant coffee if it work to make a lower viscosity slurry?

[Mike Nathal]

If it was me, I would leave the voids unfilled. I tend to fill cracks but not voids, I like the look better. I would also consider reversing the top and bottom of the vase, since all the cool features wood be more striking if they were on the top. I agree with the tape idea.

[Robert Marshall]

Thanks to all for your suggestions and comments.

I filled the voids this afternoon; some of them were quite deep. I just kept pushing the "coff-oxy" into the voids until no more would go in. We'll see how it comes out.

Mike, I like your idea of reversing the top and bottom, and may give that a try when I get back to turning this. Thanksgiving is probably going to mean a pause in woodturning, but after that, we'll see what happens.

[Robert Marshall]

I first cleaned out the voids with a set of picks, getting as much of the rotten wood, dead bugs and general dirt out as I could. I mixed up a few ounces of epoxy, and mixed in coffee grounds until I had a workable, somewhat stiff mix that I could squeeze into tight places, using stir sticks. I let it cure for a day, then sanded away the mess, leaving what were previously open voids now filled with sanded-out "coff-oxy."

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I'm satisfied with how it came out.