Workingwoods Blog

Posted By Vaughn on October 3, 2014

It’s been forever since the last entry in this blog, but today I flipped the page on my Workingwoods 2014 calendar and was pleasantly surprised to see one of my favorite bowls as the featured piece for the month. It’s been almost a year since I put together the calendar, so I tend to forget what’s on it.

This bowl has a rounded bottom – no foot – so I’ve always called it the Roly-Poly Bowl. But looking at the colors and the shape today, I dawned on me that it was a fitting piece for October, so I think from now on this one will be Miss October.

I happened to take a lot of pictures along the way as I made this bowl, and it’s a bit different from most wooden bowls, so I figured it would be a good candidate for a process pictorial. Click on any of the photos to see a larger version. Since there are a lot of photos, I’ll try to keep the captions brief. To the non-woodturner, some of the terms might be foreign. Sorry about that. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line.

This bowl started out as a chunk of dry ash I picked up at a firewood lot that was going out of business and giving away its inventory. It was roughly 14″ to 15″ across and about 8″ or 9″ thick. I started the turning between centers, but counterbored a 1″ hole as a socket for the spur center.

Makes for a secure mount…

The wood was pretty badly checked. These cracks will come back to haunt me.

Here’s the blank, mounted on the lathe…

Spin it up and start to cut…

Showing signs of roundness…

Basic cylinder shape achieved…

And the basic bowl shape established and a tenon on the end…

Time to do something about those cracks. My choice is black 2-part epoxy from the local hardware store. I add a little denatured alcohol to thin it and make it go deeper into the cracks.

All patched up…

Then sanded smooth after the glue had cured. I have also reversed the blank so it’s now attached to the lathe with the tenon in a chuck.

The chuck holds the bottom of the bowl so I can hollow out the top of the bowl…

Inside leveled out. I’m keeping the natural edge…

More of the inside hollowed out…

Time to switch to the Monster rig. I’m using a Easy Wood Tools CI0 round tip carbide cutter attached to the Monster Lathe Tools articulated arm hollowing system. The Monster includes a laser indicator to let me see how deep I’m cutting. Makes for very consistent wall thickness in a piece like this. Traditional turners will call this cheating. I call it using tools to increase accuracy and efficiency.

More crack repair…

And sanded smooth. I’m not happy with the way the epoxy looks, though…

And here’s why…the black epoxy got down into the pores of the wood, and it’s “dirtying up” the grain. I’ll deal with that later in the finishing process.

Time to remove the tenon from the bottom of the bowl. To do this, I mount a scrap bowl on the lathe and re-true it. (This was an alder bowl that I started and decided I didn’t like, so I never finished it.)

Using a shelf liner pad for friction and to avoid marking up the inside of the ash bowl, I put the bowls face to face and used the tailstock to hold the big bowl in place.

Goes something like this…

The idea is to turn away the tenon down to a little nub. Here’s how it started…

A few minutes later the tenon is down to this…

At this point in the game, I used a bit of stretch wrap to make sure the big bowl stays attached to the smaller scrap bowl…

And a view from the other side…

Final cuts on the nub with a shallow detail gouge…

Almost there…

And it’s gone. It’s all over but the sanding now…

The sanded round bottom…

I decided to hide the “dirtied up” wood grain with wood dyes. I had already learned if I dyed the dry ash directly, the dye would soak through the wood and splotch the opposite side. The solution was to add the dye to a water-based lacquer to tint it. The lacquer wouldn’t soak through the wood, but the dye would allow the wood grain to still be visible. I decided the inside of the bowl should be black, so I masked off the outside of the bowl in preparation for the spray gun…

The first coat of the black-tinted lacquer ended up looking very purple…

But a few coats later, it darkened up into a deep black.

For the outside, I started by spraying the entire outside with yellow-tinted lacquer. After that I sprayed about half the bottom with orange, followed by a few shots of red on the very bottom…

After a few coats of clear coat and some quality time with a few buffing wheels, the bowl was ready for its session in the photo tent…

Here’s what my camera sees for the initial “product” shot…

And here’s the end result after a bit of background cleanup with Photoshop…

Hard to pick a favorite view..

You can still see the wood grain on the inside, despite the heavy black dye job…

And that’s the story…Happy October!

Category: Bowls | No Comments »
Tags: ash, bowl, dye, round bottom, workingwoods

Posted By Vaughn on January 29, 2011

Back in June 2010 at a show I did in Malibu, some guy came up to me in the booth and gave me a piece of wood. He said it was a Manzanita burl that had been burned in one of the Malibu wildfires. Sure enough it looked like a half-burned log out of a campfire. I told him I’d see what was inside, but I didn’t have a lot of hope for it. It sat wrapped in plastic bags in the driveway for a couple months, and I finally got around to making something of it in August.  Seeing as how it’s now the end of January 2011, this isn’t exactly a recent piece, but the photos tell an interesting story nonetheless.

Here’s what I started with. (Click the pics to see a bigger view)…

So I lopped off the horns a bit…

Mounted it between centers…

And spun it up…

Turned a tenon on the bottom. This is showing some promise…

Hollowed the inside. Even more promising…

I put a few coats of shellac on the charcoal parts to seal them, then a coat of Formby’s Tung Oil Finish on the exposed wood. After letting that sit a few days, I hit it with multiple coats of spray lacquer…satin on the burned parts and gloss on the exposed parts. Here’s what I ended up with…

As you can see, I’ll do just about anything to avoid having to sand the outside of a bowl.

– V

Category: Bowls | No Comments »
Tags: bowl, burl, firewood, manzanita, vaughn mcmillan, woodturning

Posted By Vaughn on July 30, 2010

Every once in a while I have the pleasure of working with an extraordinary piece of wood. Bud’s platter is such a case.

Bud is a friend of mine from an Internet travel forum. I’ve known Bud (virtually) for over a decade, and we’ve become good buddies. He’s old enough to be my dad, and probably glad he’s not. As a WWII Navy vet and retired California Highway Patrol officer with a car racing habit, he has a lifetime of stories that are a joy to read.

A while back Bud contacted me and asked if I could help him with his redwood platter. He had a platter that he’d purchased years ago and it needed refinishing. He knows of my lathe work, and figured I have the tools and materials to get the job done. His only stipulation was that he wanted me to keep the platter when I was done. He felt it was a special piece of wood, and he wanted to be sure it would be in the hands of someone who would truly appreciate it. I told him I’d be honored to refinish the platter, and would be proud to add it to my personal collection of turned pieces. Well, somewhere between taking it down off the shelf and getting it boxed to ship, Bud accidentally dropped the platter, and a chunk was broken off the rim. Nonetheless, he taped the piece back in place and shipped it to me, apologizing for the accident.

When I opened the package from Bud, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Inside the box was a platter, 15″ in diameter, made out of the most stunning piece of redwood burl I’d ever seen. The gloss finish was indeed in bad shape, and sure enough, there was a chunk broken out of the rim, but it looked fixable. Here’s how it looked fresh out of the box:

The back side of the platter had a sticker on it advertising the shop that sold or made the platter. The sticker was covering a hole in the bottom of the platter that was used to mount the piece of wood on the original maker’s lathe:

Fortunately, the piece that broke off the rim did so cleanly, and it was a pretty simple fix to glue the broken piece back in place. Hopefully, it would be fairly well hidden once the platter was refinished:

The next task was to strip the old finish off the platter. I don’t have any photos of this process because frankly, the platter looked ruined. I knew in my mind that it would recover, but man, did it look bad. I tried several different strippers and solvents, and nothing seemed to work. In the end, I decided to resort to sanding away all the old finish. To do this, I mounted the platter on my lathe using a vacuum chuck. This is essentially a large suction cup attached to a vacuum pump, and it can hold a smooth piece of wood firmly on the lathe as it spins. This picture shows the platter mounted on the vacuum chuck. You can also see how bad things looked after my failed attempts at stripping the finish off chemically:

And here’s a look at the back side of the platter shortly into the sanding process. As it turned out, the old finish responded very well to 80 grit sandpaper:

A few minutes of sanding later, it was starting to look pretty good:

After sanding the entire platter, working my way from 80 grit to 800 grit, it was ready to start applying the finish. For this piece, I decided to try a finish that was new to me, polymerized tung oil. Pure tung oil can take weeks to cure, but it was claimed that the polymerized version cured much more quickly, typically overnight.

Here’s a closer look at the finish I used:

The tung oil did indeed make the wood grain look great (woodworkers call it “popping the grain”), and did in fact harden nicely overnight, but after 6 or 7 coats of the tung oil, I was still unable to get the kind of gloss finish I was looking for. The redwood was still drinking it up. So I went with my old standby of sprayed clear gloss lacquer. I applied many light coats of lacquer (probably nearly a dozen), then wet-sanded the finish with 600 grit sandpaper before buffing it with various buffing compounds. It was a lot of work spread out over several weeks, but in the end, I achieved what I call a “grand piano” finish. Very high gloss, but without the “plastic” feel many of the easier finishing products leave behind. The photos of the finished platter don’t fully show that gloss — glossy surfaces are notoriously difficult to photograph.

Here’s the front of the platter:

And the back, with the sticker replaced where I found it:

And a closer look at the sticker, showing the origins of this piece. This picture also shows the absolutely gorgeous figure in this piece of wood:

Oh yeah…and the broken chunk on the rim? It’s gone. Vanished. Disappeared. It blended in so nicely that I honestly cannot see the joint where it was glued back into place.

So that’s the story of Bud’s platter. It will hold a very special place in my collection (and my heart) from now on.

Category: Other Work | No Comments »
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Posted By Vaughn on July 23, 2010

This is another piece of ash firewood that I picked up at a local lot that was going out of business.  Unlike many other woods, ash is usually a fairly stable wood that doesn’t crack when drying. However, this one did, and usually that’s a good excuse to toss it into the firewood pile, but I decided to see if it would survive the ride on the lathe anyway. Click on any of the pictures below to see a larger version.

At the beginning, it was a fairly innocuous-looking piece of wood…

Next step is to drill a 1″ hole to inset the spur center (the pointy thing, for you non-woodturners) into the wood…

The spur center is driven into place…

And the chunk of wood is mounted on the lathe…

This, sports fans, is what shrinkage cracks can look like…

Starting to get things rounded up…

Now it actually looks like something. I dunno what, but it’s something. The knob on the end is called a tenon, and later that’s what I’ll attach to the lathe while I hollow out the inside…

As I started shaping the top, I discovered that the bark inclusion was hiding another crack…

Let’s get out the crack-measuring tool…

Yeppers, it’s deep…

So is this one and several of the others…

What the heck, let’s see if it’ll survive the hollowing process…

Looks like it worked after all. It won’t hold water very well, though…

The crack at the bark inclusion turned out to be a whopper…

But I think it looks kind of nice…

And it’s all very well ventilated…

This piece ended up being 12 1/2″ wide and 8 1/2″ tall — one of the biggest hollow forms I’ve made. It has a soft, hand-rubbed tung oil finish that seems to compliment the natural flaws in the wood. Hollowing a piece of dry ash this size is a lot of work, and the cracks made it that much more adventurous.

Feel free to comment, critique, or question!

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Posted By Vaughn on February 6, 2010

This is the big ash piece I showed progress pics of in the last blog entry. It ended up about 16 1/2” wide and 9” tall to the highest tip of the edge. It’s finished with natural Watco Danish Oil, and hand-buffed lightly with a white synthetic abrasive pad.

It ain’t perfect, but I’m pretty happy with it. Between the size and the unique natural edge, it’s an attention-grabber in person.

Comments and critiques are welcome and encouraged, as always.

Category: Bowls | No Comments »
Tags: ash, bowl

Posted By Vaughn on January 24, 2010

I usually don’t show a lot of progress pics, but the piece I turned last night was kinda interesting, so I figured I’d share it. Pardon the overabundance of photos.

I started out with a piece of dried ash from recent ‘Going Out Of Business’ giveaway at a local firewood lot. This chunk had a wavy outer surface, which looked promising for a natural edge bowl. The dimensions on the bark face were about 24″ by 18″. I started with a beater chisel to make a flat spot for the faceplate…

Then I used long hex head sheet metal screws to hold it. I don’t drill pilot holes. I just drive the screws in with an impact driver.

Here’s the initial blank mounted on the lathe. It’s blanks like this that make me glad I got the dropped bed extension for my 3520B.

Here’s another view. Notice that the spindle indexing pin is in place. The piece was pretty badly out of balance, so needed to use the electric chainsaw to trim it up a bit on the lathe. I use the indexing pin to hold things in place while I’m cutting. Also note the lathe is not even powered up. That’s just a reminder to not hit the switch with the spindle locked.

And here’s the blank after a bit of chainsaw balancing…

Tool rest and extension in place…now the fun can begin.

Do you really want to stick a piece of sharp steel into that?

Making a little headway. The ash is dry and hard, so progress is slower than on a piece of green wood. It’s also still pretty unbalanced, so I was running in the 250 to 325 RPM range at this stage. I would have preferred a bit faster speed.

A while later, it was down to this shape, about 17 1/2″ across.

And a look from the headstock side…

After reversing the blank, I did the final cleanup on the outside of the bowl. The next step was to hollow the inside out. Doesn’t this look like it’s gonna be fun?

Making some progress, but it’s slow going. I was using my Monster Indexer (Oland-style tool bit holder on a heavy handle) for the bark removal stages. You can also see that I’ve slid the headstock back and am now turning over the regular bed, not the dropped extension. This reduces the slight vibration that’s introduced by using the tool rest extension. Even though it’s heavy steel and iron, the extended tool rest vibrates more than the regular one.

Getting there, but the bottom is still about 4″ thick, and the walls are still too thick as well.

Finally to the finished dimensions. I was fighting some tearout, so I used a spray bottle and some water to help make the cuts a bit cleaner. (You can see the wetter spots in the picture.) I still had a fair about of 80 grit work to do on the tips along the rim. I’d rather spend extra time sanding than risk blowing a piece up trying to take the proverbial just one more cut.

And here’s how it looked at the end of the evening. (OK, I guess 4:00 am is not really “evening”.) I still have more sanding to do, plus a bit of reconstructive surgery on a couple spots of bark, but this is pretty much how it’s gonna look when finished. It’s 17 1/2″ wide and about 8″ tall at the highest points.

I should be showing finished pics in a week or so…

Comments, finger-pointing and name-calling are welcome. 

Category: Bowls | No Comments »
Tags: ash, bowl, natural edge

Posted By Vaughn on January 22, 2010

Wednesday night I was turning a big ash bowl and I started hearing a ticking sound. I stopped the lathe, and did some investigating. I’ll let the pics tell the story…

This was some of the wood I picked up a week or so ago at the local firewood lot. (I had thought it was jacaranda, but it’s ash instead. Bonus. And it’s about dry…10% or so moisture.) I pulled some more metal out of the blank before I started (that’s a whole other post), but the head of this nail was buried a good 3 inches or more into the tree. It had been there a long time.

No bowl gouges were harmed in the making of this post. I guess cryo treated powdered metal is harder than 30 year old nails.

BTW, the bowl ended up a bit smaller than it was when these pics were taken. See the pith near the rim in the first pic? By the time I turned that away, my 22″ bowl was down to about 17 1/2″. Ah well, it’s just wood. I hear the stuff grows on trees.

Category: Bowls | No Comments »
Tags: ash, bowl, lathe, nail

Posted By Vaughn on January 2, 2010

This is a post from one of the woodturning forums I frequent. I figured it would be an interesting way to get the blog off the ground…

My friend Mark Cothren’s to blame for this one. Although his ‘rough block’ bowls have a different look, I unabashedly took Mark’s idea and ran with it.

This one is red eucalyptus with some neat curl. It’s about 12″ x 7″ or so. (packed up right now, and I’m not in the mood to go dig it out.) The ends are rough cut (chainsaw and bandsaw). I shaped the bottom a bit to put it on a foot and raise the edges off the table, but I intentionally left the bottom rough. The finish is buffed Formby’s Tung Oil Finish with more of Don Pencil’s PL compound. (No buffing on the rough parts.)

I rather like the branch knot that ended up defining the rim of the bowl…

This shows some of the subtle curl revealed on the inside of the bowl…

There’s also the pith from a small branch near the bottom of the bowl…

I intentionally left deep tool marks on the bottom (except inside the foot) to continue the rough vs. smooth contrast…

So…thanks for the inspiration Mark. I did another one in jacaranda (it’s not as nice as this one), and will likely continue to try the idea when the right blanks present themselves.

Whatcha think? Comments are open for all…

Category: Bowls | No Comments »
Tags: red ironbark natural edge eucalyptus bowl

Posted By Vaughn on January 1, 2010

Here’s the first post of the new Workingwoods blog. Don’t know quite yet what this blog will contain or offer, but I guess we’ll all get to watch and just see what happens. 😉

For now, here’s a picture of a happy bug, taken during (and about 1/2 mile from) the Station fire in the foothills of Los Angeles.

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