Dave Mount
05-16-2020, 12:50 AM
About a year ago I turned a sphere for the first time. The motivation was our 30th wedding anniversary, the pearl anniversary. Pearls aren't really SWMBO's thing, and real pearls are too expensive to buy "just because." So, I decided to turn a pearl for her (first pic).
In a rush of experimentation, I roughed out a few other spheres from chunks of wood I had around the shop, but they weren't totally dry, so I roughed out the spheres, coated them with Anchorseal, and threw them in a corner of the shop. I hadn't thought much about them since then, but tonight I was kind of between projects and looking to fill some time, and I stumbled across that bag of roughed out spheres. Decided to finish a couple of them. Did the red oak one because it wasn't anything remarkable and I thought I better re-learn the technique on something I didn't care much about. Came out better than I expected, and the knot was kind of interesting. Then I did a sugar maple burl I cut off a firewood log. I generally don't do much smaller work -- I had saved the burl because I couldn't see not saving it, and when this sphere thing came along it seemed like something interesting to do with it.
First is curly silver maple (actually done a year ago), about 2.5", the next two the red oak sphere from this evening (about 3.5") and the maple burl is about 4". Some epoxy and ground coffee in the burl to fill some voids. Apologies for the glare.
I'll add that reconstituting dried out Shellawax is a nuisance.
Best,
Dave
433044433045433046433047433048433049
In a rush of experimentation, I roughed out a few other spheres from chunks of wood I had around the shop, but they weren't totally dry, so I roughed out the spheres, coated them with Anchorseal, and threw them in a corner of the shop. I hadn't thought much about them since then, but tonight I was kind of between projects and looking to fill some time, and I stumbled across that bag of roughed out spheres. Decided to finish a couple of them. Did the red oak one because it wasn't anything remarkable and I thought I better re-learn the technique on something I didn't care much about. Came out better than I expected, and the knot was kind of interesting. Then I did a sugar maple burl I cut off a firewood log. I generally don't do much smaller work -- I had saved the burl because I couldn't see not saving it, and when this sphere thing came along it seemed like something interesting to do with it.
First is curly silver maple (actually done a year ago), about 2.5", the next two the red oak sphere from this evening (about 3.5") and the maple burl is about 4". Some epoxy and ground coffee in the burl to fill some voids. Apologies for the glare.
I'll add that reconstituting dried out Shellawax is a nuisance.
Best,
Dave
433044433045433046433047433048433049