Dangerous Burl Live Edge Bowl Woodturning

what is hiding in this lump of live oak [Music] burrell so i've got this big chunk of live oak burl and quite honestly i had it laying around for quite a while and i wanted to see what the heck i could do with it i finally realized this is a pretty good shape for a bowl so i brought it to the band saw and trimmed it up to size this is a template that i use basically a simple circular cardboard template that allows me to line up quickly place a circle guide onto the piece of wood and then trim it on the bandsaw i'm just being real careful careful here not to actually hit the cardboard the awl that i use to hold the cardboard in place is kind of positioned about 90 degrees straight off the side of the blade and i pretty much just maintain it there and then rotate the the wood around that pivot point so that the blank rotates in a nice clean circle now this is a piece of live oak burl that i found after a hurricane a few years ago live oak wood is not the best wood to turn there's a couple reasons for that it's i've found that it never seems to dry it basically is always acting as if it's wet and it's always shifting and doing a variety of different things but when it comes to burl that's a whole different thing you've got to take a piece of burl from it well i was actually driving around looking at different downed trees and that we actually hurricane irma came through here and we had literally thousands of trees that were knocked down and what happens is basically all the different areas drag the trees to their ditch and eventually the county gets around to cleaning them up well this went on for weeks and weeks and i'd drive around looking for different types of trees and wood that i could grab and turn and instinctively when you see a stack of oak trees and the logs from them i just kind of ignored them and i was pulled up to the stop sign and there's this big stack of oak trees beside me now i looked at the end of them and i realized they were oak trees and it just kind of didn't give them another look but then there was something that was nagging at me i kept looking at them and said wait a minute there's something going on here and sure enough as i looked closer there were burls all over these logs so it took my time and and was able to collect several burls from this tree all right what i'm doing here is i'm using a spur chuck and my tail stock to line up the the blank on the lathe this gives me an opportunity to kind of balance out the top of the of the bowl itself the tool i'm using right now is a 5 8 inch swept back bowl gouge i like the swept back bull gabs because it basically can perform four different types of cuts it can do a push cut a pull cut a scrape cut and a shear scrape all with one tool this is kind of my go-to tool i have this is the large version of the 5 8 and i have a half inch version of this tool it's a little rough going at first because there's so many different voids and areas and i just basically need to start truing up the piece it takes a while to get that that process going i want to keep remembering to tighten that tail stock [Music] so i've got the curve going for the outside of the bowl a little bit but now i need to flatten the face here and that's what i'm doing here with these passes towards the center of the bubbling it's difficult getting the tool started because there's so many different variations in the material there's voids in there there's all sorts of different things it's not a very smooth surface to be working i got to remember to keep tightening that tail stock if the tail stock comes loose obviously it becomes very loose then the bolt blank can go flying but the the other issue is that if the tail stocks gets a little bit loose they can create some vibration in there as well even though it's still holding on to the bull blank so i want to make sure that's good and snug as i'm going now you guys might notice i have an extension on my tail stock there and that extension came with my lathe the purpose for that if you look down below the tool rest right now there's a section of my leg that's actually removable this is the robust sweet 16 lathe which has a 16 inch swing however if you remove that section of the the rails or the uh the bed way there that section can come out and then you have a 32 inch swing so you can do some really large pieces with this however it can be a little difficult for the tail stock to reach in there so that's what the extension is and i i basically just keep that extension on my tail socket all the time so that's why that's there and i find it pretty convenient it works it comes in handy for a lot of different things matter of fact i can put a link to that extension in the description below i'm starting to see some of the shape of the bowl and starting to see some of the patterns in that coming out which is pretty cool it's got a really nice random look to it i'm really pleased the way it's turning out so far again i'm just smoothing out that face making this this outer surface as smooth as possible i'm going to be getting this area ready to put a tenon in place i like to get my tenon and the shoulder established early so that i can start working the shape of the exterior of the bowl [Music] when you turn a burl there's a lot of time that needs to be taken to examine what's going on it's a good idea to stop frequently and really look look closely at what's happening with the the piece [Music] okay here i'm using a three-quarter inch 40-40 grind bowl gouge i have found that the 40-40 grind is really good at removing material quickly i know there's lots of people out there that will turn with the 40 40 grind and use it all the time i don't really care for it so much for regular you know kind of for a variety of different things but for removing material quickly it's a very good tool this has the um the 40 degree bevel the top of the wings from the tip to the across the top of the wings is also 40 degrees here i'm using my dividers which have been set to the width of my jaws on the forward jaw chuck and i'm putting a little mark there and now i'm going to work in with my smaller swept back bulgabs this is my half inch 55 degree bevel swept back bowl gouge and if you guys are interested on shaping and sharpening these tools be sure to check out my tool sharpening for wood bolt turning ecourse which is online now it's a great way to learn all about sharpening but not just sharpening also shaping tools and in that course i go over five different bowl gouges their shapes what their advantages are and how to create those shapes and maintain those when you sharpen i highly recommend it is a great a great course for teaching basically everything you need for shaping and sharpening tools here i've got the general tenon and the shoulder of the tenon established i'm a little concerned with that void that's right there on the tenon when the tenon grabs that and there's a chance you can crush that void and snap out that little area so i'm going to come in here with some ca glue and i'm going to reinforce that area i'm putting in some real fine shavings to help fill that void and then i'm putting in some very thin ca the very thin ca is going to it's going to go work right down into all those crevices it's going to pull all the shavings i put in there and bond those into that void i just want to make sure that i've got this reinforced i do not need a tenon coming off because that tendon comes off i'm going to be in trouble or even if the tenon shifts a little bit i'm going to be in trouble because then i have to reestablish the tendon because there'll be vibration in that so i really want to take care make sure that this is secured as best as possible again the very thin ca will work itself down into those crevices and get soaked up into the wood really good and it's uh it does a good job of reinforcing questionable material it's always good to use the accelerator and basically make sure all that's healed or healed brother but um cured inside there so it's good and solid and obviously you want to make sure it's good and solid and cured before you attach it to your four jaw chuck because there's a chance it won't come off before drought chuck if it's not cured but typically the ca cures pretty quickly okay so now i've got the the tenon cylinder and the shoulder established and i can start shaping a little more aggressively the outer curve and get the curve of the bowl the way i want it this piece is really interesting because there's so much going on there's bark inclusion inclusions there's voids there's grain going in every direction and quite honestly i can i can basically make any cut i want with this because the grain direction is not established like it is with a typical side grain mounted bowl blank here i'm using just a scraping cut this is my half inch swept back bowl gouge scraping cut is not going to it's not as refined as a push cut or even a shear scrape but it's going to remove material pretty quickly now i'm doing a push cut with the same tool when in the push cut is a more refined cut and it will leave a nice clean edge i'm starting to become a little bit concerned at this point because you can see those great big bands of bark inclusion and the bark on oak in general usually doesn't stay attached very well and the fact that there's bark that's inside this burl that i know is not attached really well to the the wood itself but yet it's kind of wrapped around i'm i'm a little concerned at this point that there's going to be some issues with that section but i also like the way it looks it's just going to be a bit of a challenge to make it all stay together while i'm turning this again more scraping cuts it's almost like a pull cut but i'm not on the bevel if i got on the bevel at this point then it would be a true pull cut the reason i use that particular cut is i can pull from the shoulder out and i can use it to shape the bowl really well okay now i'm using that push cut to get back out to the shape i'm looking for what i'm looking for in the general profile of most of my bowls is a really smooth continuous curve so if you put this bowl on a table and you got down on your knees and you looked at the base of it and you looked at the profile of it what i'm really looking for is a continuous curve with no corners or bends in it so i'm looking for a really smooth continuous flowing curve the other thing to keep in mind is while you're turning this and when you're looking for the shape instead of looking at your tool look at the opposite side of the bowl as it's taking shape that way you can actually see the form and the shape that much better now here i'm using a really subtle push cuts going from the top of the rim of the bowl towards the foot of the bowl and the reason i'm doing that is i don't want the bark that's on the outside of the bowl to get ripped off while i'm turning i know this bark is relatively fragile and is not going to want to stay on super well but i also don't want to encourage it to come off by going the opposite way here i'm making a push cut all the way down towards the foot you got to remember this burl does not have supported grain in one direction like a typical bull blank does it's kind of all over the place so no matter where you're cutting you'll have some areas where you're having supported drain but most of the time you're not going to have supported grain because it's just a big blob of wood material so a burl is kind of like a almost like a growth i i hate to say it but it's it's it's kind of gross sounding it's almost like a tumor that grows on the side of the tree and it's it's kind of random like that too because it's it's there's no pattern to it there's no rhyme or reason to it it's almost like there's what cancer is which is um you know it's cells that basically just reproduce randomly and don't follow an organized pattern so here you can see i'm doing the push cut from the rim down and just that direction keeps the bark pushed up against the wood underneath so it's not going to pop off as easily as if i went the other direction and i'm looking for the inside curved shape of this bowl at this point and if i can define it at the top rim and then i can meet it up from the bottom it will be that much easier so now i've got the top established and i just need to remove the bulk of the material at the base of the bowl now don't be afraid to remove a lot of material when you first do this you might be thinking oh my goodness i'm getting all this wood out of here and uh i might be screwing it up and obviously you can't put it back in once you've taken it out but if you're following the nice flowing curve that you're seeing it come together here now that's what you're really trying to achieve now keep in mind too is i've got that tenon and the shoulder in the base those are right now just for support and those will go in the chuck i'm going to reshape those later they're going to be smaller and more refined once i get that portion done but i'm going to finish the whole bowl first before i refine the base area of the bowl again using the scraping cut to pull out of that little area you see how that works really good to get into that little bit of space there so the outer shape is looking pretty good i'm at this point i'm doing a little bit more refinement on the the shoulder area and leading up to the shoulder i try to get the exterior nailed down really well the thing is most people don't realize the inside of the bowl and the overall shape of the bowl is all dictated by the exterior design of that bowl so the more time you take making that perfect the better it's going to be now i'm going to put the doveta dovetail angle on the tenon using my spindle detail gouge here i made the undercut there it's about a 10 they say about 10 11 degree angle i'm not super super precise with it but it gets in there and it gets really really close to that angle and you want to make sure that that inside corner is cleaned out so that your dovetail jaws lock into the piece really tight see there's spalt in here there's worm holes there's all sorts of things that are going on and again i'm going to take a little extra time to take care of these cracks especially since this is going to get mounted into the chuck i want to make sure that this stuff is as secure as possible i have worked with really brittle pecan before and had the tenons shear off where if you get a minor catch that whole base just shears right off of him and it's not that big of a deal i mean you can basically return another tenon but it's i'd rather not have to do it if i don't need to this is the accelerator that i use to get that ca cured quickly i'll put links to all these materials in the description below so be sure to check those out so we've got the exterior done and i'm going to put this now on in the chuck we take our spur chuck out we're done using that and i'm going to put the four jaw chuck in place you really want to make sure it's held in there firm and it's seated nice and flat and flush on top of all four of the chuck jaws then snug it up on both sides [Music] checking to make sure it's going to rotate fine now there's a big enough chunk in the middle here that i don't want to just carve this out and waste it and turn into shavings and dust actually a lot of this is just turning to dust because there aren't any continuous grain lines anywhere in here what i'm doing here is i'm measuring the depth of the bowl and i've determined how far the swing of the one-way coring system will go then i'm lining up the location of the where the cut will be made and then tightening both of the bolts on the one way coring system the tail stock comes in and is used for added support during the coring process you want to get the lathe going before you bring the tail stock up just in case you're off just to hear the that way it's centered on there so with the coring system in place i'm basically just going to start gradually making a cut here you can hear the clanking it's basically hitting that high spot on the bull blank at this point it hasn't it'll take a little while before we get down into the material really well you see how it's cutting that high spot and it's just starting to make a little bit of a cut on the opposite side but it's pretty much just that high spot right now that's getting cut what this affords me to be able to do is i can basically get two bowls out of one burl so that whole middle section is going to be core down and i'll save that for another gold later the other thing it does is it prevents me from having to cut through all of that material it would take quite a while plus it's quite a bit of stress on the tenon as well to basically hollow that all out with the old gouge so once this center is removed then i basically just need to refine the inside shape of the of the main bowl occasionally you'll get a little hang up in there and that's the the lathe will get locked up and you can hear the belt skip in there when it does that the cut's getting deeper it's looking pretty good so what i do here is i take the wrench and i loosen up the support i want that support arm to be in there as far as i can make it then typically when i'm coring that's going to get repositioned a couple times through the process [Applause] it's kind of neat with a natural edge piece like this there's a lot of voids and air spaces in there so you can actually see the cutting tool inside the cut itself if there was this if this were a solid bull blank you wouldn't be able to see that as easily the big thing here is to make little bites and to pull the arm out so that it is not in the path too deep and gets clogged up with shavings you don't want that to happen so you make small cuts until you basically reach the center point at the bottom and there it was so there's the inside bowl blank which already has a nice curved bottom which makes it really easy to go back and put it on the lathe later so now i'm really concerned because i can see this barking closure it's going all the way through so before it can get me i'm going to get it so i'm going to add a whole bunch of real thin or super thin ca to help secure this area and again the accelerator to dry that really well and i'm going to go ahead and do it on the inside as well now i'm going to be cutting through this material but again the ca is so thin that it will soak down in there and have a bonding effect on the on that void but i'm really concerned at this point because there's a big section that's hanging off to the side and if that comes off it's definitely going to go flying so what i'm doing here is i'm using gaffers tape gaffers tape is used in the movie industry and it is it's really fascinating because it's a cloth really high quality cloth tape that has a an adhesive on it that's somehow incredibly strong but doesn't leave any residue on it so gaffers in the movie industry will use this to tape down cords they'll use it for anything it's kind of like duct tape you literally can use it for anything so here i'm basically putting it over this gap to try to to hold this thing together i don't want this separating mainly because i want it to be a nice bowl but also because i don't want to get hurt it has a big chunk of wood there and it's clearly going to throw everything out of balance too if it comes off so not only would i have something flying but i'm going to have something that's that's basically going to make the lathe start dancing across the floor at the same time so i taped up this one side of you look at the other side it's doing it there's a big bark enclosure on the other side as well and i haven't addressed that yet it's right there in the foreground see this bark with wood on top of it it's just burl is so cool because it's so unusual but at the same time it's just bizarre and potentially dangerous so when i work a natural edge bowl [Music] and it's funny because i started doing this with natural edge bowls and i do it with almost all of my bowls i will work the thickness of the top rim first and then core out the center and go back and work my way down the bowl the reason being is i can establish my thickness my wall thickness and i can just gradually work my way into the bowl i don't have to do this all in one pass but i don't want to so you can see here i'm thinning it down i want to get that tool rest in there close so i've got good supported [Music] cuts going in there without as little vibration as possible now again with those voids in the perimeter of this bowl i can see down into this piece really well so i'm actually looking at the tool and i'm just placing exactly where i need it to be with pretty good precision to get the thickness the way i want so i remove a chunk of material here that i know is going to go away and then i get myself back closer to that wall thickness at this point so now i'm going to pick up that wall thickness from the outside edge and here you can see i'm basically matching the bevel on the bowl gouge and making it parallel to the exterior of the bowl and what's very important because i have these voids going by that want to smack the tool is i'm not pushing into the bowl with my hand that's guiding right there on the tool rest i'm basically just keeping that tool down on the tool rest and gliding it into the space i'm letting the wood come around and be cut as it comes around i'm not pressing into the wood at all instead i'm just sliding it across the tool rest so again i'm removing some of the bulk material on the inside and working my way down to that wall thickness and as i get close to it i want to pick it up from where i left it off before like there i can see where it is okay that's my wall thickness now i'm getting into new material and i've got the wall thickness pretty consistent it's important to stop frequently and feel it your fingers can tell if one area is thicker than another and that's really critical to to be paying attention to [Music] this is where i'm starting to get nervous and i'm afraid that the bowl is going to try to attack me by by coming apart and lodging something into me so i'm getting pretty alert at this point and i'm [Music] i'm getting really cautious i'm taking really small bites normally with if this is a regular bowl or even a solid like green wood bowl i'd be ripping large sections out at this point wouldn't have much concern but because this is what it is i'm i'm getting really cautious at this point i'm making really light cuts and we're getting really close to the bowl basically deciding it wants to try to reach out and bite me here the wall thickness feels good everything feels good at this point and take down a really thin layer now what you're seeing these passes aren't more than about a thirty second of an inch in some cases now this is thicker because i'm removing both material here and i'm getting a little more aggressive that's probably what i shouldn't be doing and here it comes listen did you hear that not only do you hear it but if you see in the back there's tape that's slapping around well the tape did its job it held that piece in place because it would have gone flying and it would have been out of luck at this point but instead it held everything in place you can see that the void there and the disconnect i went through that and glued it up really good and then i also spent some time and glued that other section very well at this point the wood was basically telling me yep we're we're more than happy to come apart and go flying across your shop and maybe hurt you if you want but i was having none of it at this point i can see how cool this bowl is going to look and i don't want to be losing it so i spent some more time and glued it up really good and put some more gaffers tape all the way across the back of it you can see the glue dried there and the crack again now i think with that one too i actually used some medium gel inside there because i have a literal void i use some of the thicker ca and let it hold all of that that section together really well and then i i still went back in with the thin ca and let that go leach down into the crevices so that they can basically work down into the material really well and hold on even better it's looking really cool mount some more cracks that i'm a little concerned with so i'm going to glue those up the biggest concern is making that cut all the way through that bulk material in the center and whether or not that that section is going to come off if you look at the top there there's another wing at the top right now and that i was concerned is going to come off too and there's everything going on with this piece there's bark inclusion all the way down into the center of the piece there is spalt you can see the white spalt which is kind of like white rott's fault and then there's black line spalt there's worm holes there's open worm holes and then there are filled wormholes it's just a cool piece it's a very unique piece of wood and this is very dry at this point too so i'm not really worried about it moving a ton after it's cut so i need to keep refining that curve i'm just going to make really light cuts here this is probably less than the 32nd of an inch it's being removed at a time there again feeling it determining where it's too thick where it's where it's just right and then making the the subtle adjustment and if you need to there too sometimes with the lathe off and you're touching it with your fingers you can see feel a high spot very easily but then when you turn the lathe on you kind of forget where it is don't be afraid to take a pencil and draw a circle where that high spot is the circle pencil line will be easy to see when you're turning and it'll quickly get removed when you make the cut and it allows you to work on just that high spot so you don't accidentally go into another area and remove extra material there typically if you're going really small thin lines or thin cuts like i'm doing here you you will be okay it's if you get a little more aggressive then you may take off too much in one ear and it's not easy to put the wood back in place i'm being really cautious here and taking lots of cuts to get down to my level that i want to reach and here i backed up just a little bit to merge the previous level with the new level and we'll take a look and see how that feels now you can see that whole section of our conclusion is separated from where i'm cutting and it's basically just hanging on by glue and tape at this point this live oak pearl is going to try to kill me but i'm gonna i'm not gonna let it succeed i'm gonna keep gluing it and taping it until i get done with this piece the idea too of working down the wall and leaving the center intact is you have a hub or a mass of material in the center of the bowl and that helps keep the bowl turning stable so you have this really nice stable situation and you can get on the you can get your wall thickness down not with this piece but if you have a regular old blank you can get some very thin walls with that core in the middle and they don't it doesn't start vibrating and then you just slowly move remove the core as you work down the wall the trick is not to go back up the wall at any point because there's going to be vibration up there that you didn't have before if you have a very thin turn piece even with this piece which is probably about a half inch thick wall i'm not going to go back up to those walls because i know that they're going to be moving a little bit now and even that the other thing that's important with this one is if i got a little catch on those that whole section that's got the bark inclusion on is just going to go flying again really really light cuts to work down to the final thickness [Applause] when we get to the center of the piece you want to slow the cut down because the rotation speed is a little bit slower there you never want to push through the center of it if you push through the center of it you're going to run the risk of pulling out fibers there and when you pull out fibers they could be they can run pretty deep especially with a piece like this that's got green going in a variety of different directions it can be leave a big divot there and then you got to sand all of that down below the length the depth of that divot you don't want to do that so you go light nice and slow there so i got the shape the way i want it now it's time to sand it and i'm basically just working through the grits here um start with 80 see some tool marks there and that's kind of to be expected especially with a long open area like that that's that's in the piece but when i'm using this three inch sanding disc i am only sanding on an edge of it in this case it's the bottom edge you notice that the top edge is not engaging in the wood there's no way to hold that up against the the wood and with complete contact without it causing issues so you only use one side of it or one edge the way i basically work is i'll take off i'll remove any rough areas so there's the tool mark areas and things like that i'll do those by hand like i'm doing right now [Music] and when i've got most of the material cleaned up the way i want then i can turn the lathe on and i remove some of that smooth it down with the lathe rotating but i don't do that a ton here some of the wormholes were coming undone and i didn't want to leave those half undone so there's material falling out of them so what i did is i took the time with it with a dental tool and cleaned out the wormholes and the crevices that were coming apart naturally some of the wormholes that were more intact i just left those intact the wormholes and the casings that the worms leave behind are sometimes almost as solid as the wood and the finish that i'm going to use on this later will help solidify them even more so basically just work around the bowl from the rim to the interior checking and as i'm going for any kind of areas that need more sanding here i'm back into picking out more holes and blowing them up you want to get that dust off of there between layers or between sanding grids now it's time to sand the exterior and i've got to take off all this tape the tape really worked well i'll put a link to the gaffer's tape below as well because it's it's very useful it's not cheap but it's very useful and like i said before is it doesn't leave any residue it's the craziest thing you would think it would leave all kind of gummy residue but it sure doesn't and it's perfect for this now here i've basically taken all this time to make sure this bark didn't get destroyed while i'm turning i want to make sure it stays on there for as long as possible so what i'm doing is i'm saturating the base of the bark where it comes in contact with the wood and i'm using the super thin ca and i'm letting that soak into the into the bark area and the idea is that it soaks down in through the bark and into the wood below and then it will basically bond those two and keep them bonded for as long as possible that's bar clear down there that's what bark enclosure is right there it's it's just a weird thing i it's almost like a a blob of dough like cookie dough that hasn't been rolled out it's just kind of been folded over a few times and is in some weird formation that's bark right there as well so what this is going to do is going to help all of that bond and hold really well [Music] you want to make sure that you stay out of the fumes of the ca as well they're very toxic and they can cause all kinds of issues make sure it's a well-ventilated space that you're working in and or you have a respirator that's qualified uh a vapor respirator for that the ca glue fumes are not healthy by any means so now i'm working the exterior in the same fashion i'm basically working around from the bark edge the rim and then down into the bowl itself and i'll go through the grits i go through the the sequence of grits that go from 80 to 120 to 180 to 240 to 320 and once i've gotten to 320 i've got a nice smooth finish that's ready for my finish [Music] just a matter of taking time and looking where there's any kind of marks or issues that need to be sanded out any kind of residue with the ca is being sanded off here at this point so it's not as visible and it's time to come off the lathe so far it's so good it's staying together looking good now i'm putting a jam chuck in and i'm going to reverse the bowl and shape the tenon remove the tenon and shape the foot of the bowl i use a piece of foam tape and or a foam uh pad rather on the between the jam chuck and the bowl itself so it doesn't scratch up the interior that i just sanded i'm gonna bring the tail stock up and center it right on the nub where it was originally when i made the tenon and then using my half inch swept back bowl gouge i'll start removing the tenon and the shoulder and shape the the foot of this bowl now i know that the interior surface is about a half inch above where i'm at so i'm not even remotely worried about coming into contact with that and part of that is visually looking down from where i'm turning i can see the curve of the bowl as long as i maintain that curve i know that i'm not going to have any issues with the interior so that's really important kind of visually remember to make that curve as smooth as possible it's another benefit of making the nice smooth curve so the exterior of the bowl up to the foot is finished at this point so i'm going to go through the process of sanding all around the foot while i still have it on a lathe here it's obviously a lot easier to sand here than it would be off the lathe and now it's time to cha shape the foot itself i want to make sure i've got a good flat bottom on this foot so i make a nice clean cut across the bottom and as i move towards the center i'm actually cutting down into the tenon a little bit farther i'm making really light scraping cuts here coming back start removing that material and shaping the inside of that foot now here we're making a push cut to the center that's lowering that interior portion the best thing to do with this is to look down onto the piece and you'll see how that flat or that curved interior of the foot is matching up with the curve of the bowl and that's the ultimate goal so when this is done right the curve of the bowl should be continuous and it almost looks like a circular foot has been added to the bowl now i'm going to use my spindle detail gouge to remove this little nub or reduce it and then i'm going to kind of finalize the curve of the bottom here now that curve is going deeper into the foot than the feet so that the curved area will not touch a tabletop for instance only the circular foot wheel here i'm pushing in and using a cutting motion and then i'm going to hand rotate this so that the spindle gouge basically cuts that piece the little nub that's left on there we'll just take that around here and sand it right off usually something like that about 80 grit believe it or not it sands down pretty fast again just want to work on one edge of the sanding pad at me we really want to be careful not to touch the feet here because it'll it'll level those feet down as well and i've got the shape i'm looking for now it's time to apply some finish to this piece look at that spalt in there that's that's black line and white rots ball together now i want to use a finish here that's going to have some other benefits other than just looking good so i'm using a natural shellac that i make if you want to know more about how to make your own shellac go to my website go to turnawoodbull.com forward slash shellac and you can see this article i've got that goes into all the details of it super easy to make there's only two ingredients and it's a hundred times better than any kind of shellac product you can buy from the store it's very pure it's very thin i'm making what's called a one pound cut and it's a very thin shellac and what it does is it penetrates down into the the wood very well and that's going to it's going to do a couple different things it's going to protect the surface obviously but it's also going to bond everything together so all of those materials all those loose edges the bark enclosure this is basically working like a an adhesive as well not only that it's filling in crevices on the surface so areas where the grain is moving in different directions it's going to be more coarse but it's going to help fill those sections in and the beauty of that is as those sections get filled in it's easier for a final finish like lacquer to be applied and give it a really nice gloss appearance if you have a very coarse surface you're not going to get a gloss finish on it because basically the gloss finish is the product of being a really reflective smooth surface so that's what i'm looking for here and the shellac really does a great job with that and it dries relatively quick so i'm putting on a couple coats here make sure that's down in there really good and you can come back after this is dried and sanded again and you're going to make that surface even smoother that's it that is a big live oak burl turned into a live edge bowl with bark inclusion and all kinds of good stuff leave me a comment below and let me know what you think be sure to hit that like button and subscribe if you're not already thanks and happy turning [Music] you

Channel: Turn A Wood Bowl

Views: 312,021

Rating: 4.8125181 out of 5

Keywords: Dangerous Burl Live Edge Bowl Woodturning, woodturning burl, woodturning, woodworking, live edge bowl, live edge burl bowl, burl bowl, burl woodturning, live oak, dangerous, lathe woodturning, wood bowl, natural edge, bark enclosure, dangerous turning, wood lathe safety, woodturning trick, no fast forward, homemade shellac, wood turning, bowl turning, natural edge bowl, woodturning bowl, live edge, wood lathe, wood turning bowl, bowl turning videos, wood lathe turning

Id: _IiJ0zUKWc4

Length: 54min 44sec (3284 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020