Russ Kaiser
07-18-2007, 9:58 AM
Hello everyone,
Before I ask my question let me give you a little background. I have been turning for a couple of years now but instead of making bowls, pens, furniture elements, and decorative items I was making mandrels, tools, and other widgets to help me work on musical instruments. As a result, I was never really concerned with the finish and quality of my work. Starting this year I started making wooden pieces for the fiberglass serpents that I was making. These pieces included mouthpieces, finger hole trim rings, and a bell garland rings. Now the wood choices, quality of work, and finish matter quite a bit. This looks like a great place to pick up all the pointers I need to improve my work.
My initial question involves prepping green wood blanks to be used for my finger trim rings and mouthpieces. Up to this point I have been buying stabilized wood, but I just took down a dogwood in my yard and I would like to experiment with some of it to see if it is suitable for this type of work. A typical mouthpiece blank would be 2 x 2 x 3. Is this blank small enough to use the boiling method without roughing out the mouthpiece first? How about a 1 x 6 dowel, could this be boiled? After the boiling do I need to coat the end grain while it dries?
Here is a photo of a mouthpiece in African Blackwood.
http://www.kaiserserpents.com/images/serp6_06.jpg
http://www.kaiserserpents.com
Before I ask my question let me give you a little background. I have been turning for a couple of years now but instead of making bowls, pens, furniture elements, and decorative items I was making mandrels, tools, and other widgets to help me work on musical instruments. As a result, I was never really concerned with the finish and quality of my work. Starting this year I started making wooden pieces for the fiberglass serpents that I was making. These pieces included mouthpieces, finger hole trim rings, and a bell garland rings. Now the wood choices, quality of work, and finish matter quite a bit. This looks like a great place to pick up all the pointers I need to improve my work.
My initial question involves prepping green wood blanks to be used for my finger trim rings and mouthpieces. Up to this point I have been buying stabilized wood, but I just took down a dogwood in my yard and I would like to experiment with some of it to see if it is suitable for this type of work. A typical mouthpiece blank would be 2 x 2 x 3. Is this blank small enough to use the boiling method without roughing out the mouthpiece first? How about a 1 x 6 dowel, could this be boiled? After the boiling do I need to coat the end grain while it dries?
Here is a photo of a mouthpiece in African Blackwood.
http://www.kaiserserpents.com/images/serp6_06.jpg
http://www.kaiserserpents.com