Thanks! The spherical profile on this prototype is a real fist filler. My friend has big paws and likes big scrubby knots, so this is the way I may loft the final product. It won’t splay much.
Sorry it took so long to get back to this. Very possible the YaYa had a little moisture to it. I would pour a small amount in a cup (keep it clear) and stick a scrap of both woods in there and see what it does. Moisture in the wood has screwed up many things for me with Alumilite. This is Teak in Alumilite. It's over 20 years old but was sitting in a shed in the damp Santa Cruz Mountains where it obviously picked up more moisture than I expected. Alumilite still hardens but it puffs up if the wood isn't totally dry. A few thin scraps of wood tested in clear resin will possibly give you the answer.
The product I had was called Pentacryl. I used it to stop checking in a drying burl a number of years ago.
That is very good advice! Thanks for that, and yes, I think this may be the culprit...I'll look to do the moisture test you recommended.
Tried to turn a test handle today, but I liked the woodpile blank so much I finished it off. It was the crazy grain that got me. I even came to acceptance of the tiny tear out in the twig sized knot. I will mail this off to a friend with a love of large scrubby knots and gargantuan handles. I will make him glue the knot, hoping that he’ll set it at least 3mm higher. Pearwood Huge eagle-ish shape, just under 60mm tall and 50mm max diameter 28mm Shave Forge boar knot Beeswax finish Scrubby loft (and how!)
Resin ‘Fixing’ Project: Earlier on this thread I posted pics of a brush handle of mine where the resin didn’t harden properly on the wood edge. Lots of good advice came as to why- probably moisture in the wood. I decided to try and save the resin top as I really liked it. Here is the brush ‘before’, you can see the whitish, cloudy soft resin along the wood edge: Took it back to the lathe to partition off the top. I turned a 1 inch round ‘end’ to fit into a new handle. In the pic below, you can see where I was about to part it off. I also wanted wood on the bottom for a good bond, and not the 1/8th in or so of soft resin. Chose the same wood, YaYa: Next, I turned a new base for the handle, and used a 1 inch sawtooth to hollow out a receptacle for the top part: Finished turning it and made sure the top fit well: Epoxied the two pieces together, applied finish, some buffing and voila: I’m quite pleased with it, truth be told.
Bravo! Impressive fix. Thanks for sharing the whole process. Truth be told, I like the new profile and cleaner/clearer transition to the resin even better than the original! Work of art.
Some inkwell stands ready to go out to a friend. Pearwood. While I was at it, some yard art. Inkwells for scale. Deodar cedar. The odd wavy seam in the grain is a transition between a grafted dwarf deodar cultivar and the rootstock that bolted through and grew to 30 feet. I think I turned it just to see if my lathe and I could work at that size. About a peck and a half of shavings. If I could find a 125mm diameter knot I could loft it and justify posting to a brushmaking forum. Meanwhile, it’s a lonely rook that will never find its chess set.
11 1/4” tall, 7 1/4” base diameter. Not sure of your question on the lathe turning outward. The head on my lathe can swivel 180 degrees, for bowl and plate work, I suppose. I haven’t ever used it in that position. It is not reversible. I turned this piece between centers, base/bottom on the drive side. My “blank” was to big for my saw, very irregular, very out of balance and neither flat nor square on either end. The bark came off like shrapnel. I dressed the base/bottom close to flat and used a couple scrapers, a bowl gouge, and a little skew chisel work to flatten and dish out the top. At the finish I had spigots about an inch long at each end. Lots of sanding, this deodar is both coarse and a little soft.
There was a guy who talked about trees & happy accidents. There are no mistakes. Nice way to repurpose the piece!
