Wednesday, August 08, 2018

I've Got Wood!

My neighbor bought the house across the street about a decade ago.  His parents rented it when he was a kid & he had a lot of fond memories, especially of the big maple in the side yard.  Back then it had three trunks.  The one his swing used to hang on was gone when he moved in & shortly thereafter, a second trunk came down.  A couple of weeks ago, a storm knocked down the final trunk & he gave me 4 big pieces.  They're almost two feet in diameter, so I've been turning some nice, big bowls plus a bunch of little ones out of it.

My big lathe (I have 4.) has a 24 inch swing, but the biggest bowl I've ever turned was just under 22 inches when dry.  It's tough to cut & mount such a big piece.  They're heavy & often have voids, cracks, & other flaws that only become apparent after I've put in hours of work.  I found a 16d nail buried deep inside one of my neighbor's maple pieces.  That was quite a surprise which cost me over an hour to pry it out & put a new edge on my gouge.  Remounting & shaping the bowl cost it an inch in diameter, too.  Still, when everything works out, the results are stunning mostly due to the natural beauty of the wood.

When I first started turning, I was too cheap to buy wood to practice with, so I used chunks out of the firewood pile.  Even my clunky first attempts couldn't hide just how pretty the grain was.  It was unique & gorgeous!  Oak has a distinct grain, but it wasn't until I turned a bowl that I found how the grain could contrast to the rays within the wood to create a bullseye that draws the attention.  Osage Orange is so hard & tight grained that it almost doesn't need finishing.  I occasionally find odd coloration in the wood, too.  There's a fungus that gets in some woods like Box Elder which is a bright red, but more often there are shades of brown like ambrosia maple.

Green (just cut, wet) wood is the easiest to turn & there isn't much dust, but it takes more time to finish.  The wood roughens as it dries & every tool mark pops.  They can be difficult to scrape or sand out.  The bowls deform too, but that can be a plus.  Wood shrinks most radially, some across the tangent, & almost not at all along its length, but each piece varies a lot depending on the species, knots, heart or sap wood & even the time of year. I try to turn so the orientation, shape, & thickness of the finished piece let the wood change itself into neat shapes as it dries without cracking.  I succeed fairly often now after only 15+ years of practice.

It's amazing how many different species of wood I can find locally.  I grew up on a farm & have been a woodworker most of my life, so I thought I knew something about wood.  Then I started turning & realized I didn't know much even about those I'd used all my life.  I started collecting pieces & turn an egg out of each.  An egg shows off the grain in every orientation & shows how the wood deforms as it dries.  I have over 75 unique eggs now.

I've pretty much stuck with turning green, found wood & rarely run low.  Not only do I have a small woods on the farm, but I often turn bowls for neighbors & coworkers.  If they give me enough wood to turn a few bowls, I give them one for free which is a great keepsake & conversation piece.  Occasionally I sell them & it helps pay for my hobby, but I hate that part, so most are given away as gifts.

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