Woodturning - My Nicest Vase Ever

Jim from Sprague wood turning this week we're going to use some sweet gum pods some Duke and purple heart can't forget that awesome designer epoxy the vacuum chamber to make one of the coolest vases I have made in my career well this is something new these are sweet gum pods and these come to us from Kelly Lamont from Kelly Lamont Lamont wood turning I will put her details in the description down below so you can check her out she's got a Facebook site um you know I've been trying to come up with a creative solution to use these and it would be too easy to just Chuck these into a bucket throw some resin on top of them I figured that I would add some wood and that's what these are this is purple heart and paduke and I think the combination of these pieces along with jungle Green from designer epoxy and some White Ice as well should look really cool uh I have taken the time to cut these stems off Kelly sent along a big box them so thanks again Kelly I really do appreciate that I can definitely see why people don't like the having these trees around I can't imagine stepping on one of these uh and bare feet you'd be doing the atlas jig for a while you know what I mean if you're in the military you might know what that means uh so the other thing too is I used my My Level to my laser level to lay this all out ah the problem is I got some complaints on it when it's not level it flashes and uh bringing on epilepsy I guess is an issue with that so I did that off camera uh and I've cut these kind of the bottom of them to fit the profile of the bucket that we're going to use all right let's get these glued in place and we'll go from there when it comes to installing these wooden pieces symmetry is important to me so that's why I thought it was important to really lay these out the way that they are I alternated them one paduke and then one Purple Heart all the way around the bucket and there may be some people wonder what angle I cut these at and there's really no point me telling you that because your bucket may be different from this one but I think it was at three degrees or something like that gave me the the Tilt that I needed for them to rest against the outside of the bucket once all the pieces went in and then of course I just glued them at the top to make sure that they weren't going to move around once the pods went in and it was in the vacuum chamber and also in the pressure pot on the very bottom of this piece I wanted to make sure that there was basically a bed of PODS before I put in that plastic spacer that you've seen me put in earlier so that's why it's removed uh the pods themselves there was there was a lot of debris in them and I and you know I have never dealt with these so I don't really know what to expect from them but it's blown the moat was essential um you could maybe even dump them into a box and kind of rattling them up and then dump them out and then keep doing that until you get them relatively clean but I never really noticed any loose pieces in the final casting but I'm sure there's probably some in there so trying to keep them clean though so you don't have a lot of floaty bits is pretty important so make sure you focus on that when you're casting pieces like this still got a few left over for a future project all right let's mix up some resin we're going to be using a lot of epoxy this week so deep casting epoxy from designer epoxy is what we're going to be using and we've used the jungle green a couple of times I believe there it is there and you know I like to mix my pigments strong I don't typically like to do a lot of transparent type castings and the white ice is just there to give it a little bit more Pearl effect if you will so that's why I use that and to lighten it up just a little bit all right so this is our first liter and a half I don't know what this is going to take I'll take at least two of these I would say for sure quite possibly three yeah all right well I'll mix that same amount up and I'll bring it back when I'm uh when I'm ready here's another liter and a half camera shut off in the middle of this so I don't know how much of this I got yeah it looks like it's gonna need one more all right this is the last liter and a half so this will bring it to four and a half liters all right that's a lot of resin uh hopefully we don't have any thermal cracking I'm a little surprised these pods aren't floating uh okay so what I want to do now is I want to put this in the vacuum chamber because there's a ton of voids inside of these little pods I want to make sure that those all get filled and then we'll throw the pressure plot okay I've moved this so that you can watch this and see the gauge as well hopefully I expect this to really foam a lot I'm hoping that the pods don't uh float if they do then we'll have to cut out some some hardboard fit around there so to keep them contained but I expect this is gonna foam and bubble quite a bit [Music] these ones are starting to float I figured as much there now we can't really see anything at all so I got this vacuum chamber and the vacuum pump came with it off of Amazon but the this has got oil in it the vacuum pump does and it just is constantly weeping oil at the top so I'd like to hear from others that may have the same setup I will try to get the information for that at the end of this video uh but a lot of oil vapor and I'm always constantly wiping the top of the vacuum pump as well it seems to work fine I just find it a little strange that there's so much oil Vapor being pushed out of the vacuum pump when it's being in use so if you've got one I'd like to hear from you that's been about an hour and a half so I've just been cycling it on and off still can't pull a full full vacuum if this was a deeper bucket then you might be able to do that but it's still got a fair bit of air coming out but I think that once this goes in the pressure spot it's going to be good so what I'm going to do is take the vacuum off here I'll top up the resin and then I'll throw out the push spot Lori well that is dropped off quite a bit I've got another 700 milliliters mixed up here mixed it up the same intensity so I'm just going to top this up I'm sure this is not enough well it is going to be enough okay wish me luck uh if there's thermal cracks it's not the end of the world I really like filling in those thermal cracks with gold uh there's over five liters here so that is well over the manufacturer's recommended depth of pour but we'll see we'll know in 72 hours this is actually 72 hours later uh the soluble no audio the battery died in my microphone and I didn't realize it uh I'm actually very surprised that this didn't crack uh when the depth of pour on this was eight and a half inches and that was done in a single pour so you know hats off again to designer epoxy I was really hoping to actually reuse that plastic piece but uh it just uh if I had to spread some mold release on it like I never do but if I had to spread some mold release on it it's probably what it came out a lot easier as far as removing it from the bucket was concerned uh it really wasn't that big of a fight to be honest with you I've certainly had much worse as as people probably know I did want to take the glue off the very top where I glued the uh the pieces of wood because that was going to probably hamper the casting from coming out anyway as soon as I got a couple blocks of wood and set it up there and give it a hammer a few times that would come quite easily split my bucket in the meantime also I'm gonna have to get one of them once I located the uh the center on the bottom I decided to take it over to the Belt Sander here but it was taking forever to grind that you know those those exotic Woods are usually quite hard so I eventually took it back over after cleaning off the belt I mean that that those belt cleaners really do an amazing job uh anyway use the cuts all sander here to grind down the majority of the wood and then once I've got that ground down I went back over to the drum sander and or belt sander sorry and then finish grinding them down I didn't see the need to grind it completely flat but it was good enough surface that I was able to glue on another piece of wood that way we can use the tail stock and mount it between centers starting off with the Hercules from Hunter tool systems uh this is the larger number three or the 5 8 diameter one uh pin some comments about negative rake scrapers and why I'm not using them and essentially even though this has a cupped cutter on it the front of the tool is tipped downwards so that puts it in a negative rake position just so that everybody's clear with that negative rake is absolutely preferred for turning resin that's for sure once I had it routed I was able to bump it up to a thousand which kind of really surprised me because there's a fair bit of weight here and I forgot to measure the weight on this I know that I I want it to do that with every video but man it's just a matter of remembering to do so which I'm sure some of you can appreciate as you see in the previous clip we are finally getting some rain some desperately needed rain the forest fires this year have been out of control and I'm actually highly surprised to hear from a number of people even somebody I believe in Italy said it was on the news there so uh wow it's it's making international news that's for sure uh the forest fires that were around where we live here is uh they're all under control now the rain has certainly helped with that uh we are very close to Canadian Forces base pedal Walla and the ranges are literally across the river from where we live and uh it's concerning when they're firing artillery or you know when when soldiers are on the Range I know I've been there I don't know how many fires that we've started over the years during training uh some years you're putting out more fires than you were doing training so and actually my wife when she was in high school they almost lost their house to uh to a fire that was caused by the military firing um artillery I believe in the training area near uh near Gage down gauge down in Brunswick and as far as the air quality is concerned I haven't really smelled any smoke now for probably a week so that certainly has been uh welcomed and I'd like to send out a special shout out to the uh the forest fire force firefighters that are here fighting these forest fires from all over the world it's very cool to see people come and help us put out these fires so thanks to them for what they do for us here I really do appreciate it along with millions of other Canadians so this piece I'm not going to put a glue block on the bottom of it I've got that piece of hardboard on the very bottom that MDF and I'm going to actually incorporate that and use it as a Tenon that's a little stronger than just the resin but the resin is on the other side of it so uh when I'm doing any shaping of this piece when it's unsupported I'm taking very light Cuts that's for sure so once this is mounted then the Chuck we can be a little bit more aggressive with this uh still using tail stock support uh the the amount of weight that's overhanging off of the Chuck here could easily break that Tenon off so whenever you see it unsupported which is not going to be very often it is I'm taking very light Cuts with it so as far as profile is concerned I decided to go with a total different profile this week I think that I did a ball very similar to this with deep coves in it um my wife is like you know he always kind of stick to one profile and like well yeah I I like classic shapes uh I'm I try to vary things on Olive forms and on the phases that I do so this is certainly different from the norm that's for sure I want it to make sure that the base was a lot smaller than the top of the vase so I decided to work in that area first Whittle that down I maybe could have gone a little bit smaller in the foot area but you know overall I'm really happy with this piece that is the Phoenix if you're curious and that's a great little tool for getting in and working in those deep coves the Hercules uh the the smaller Hercules actually will do a good job of this as well but I really like the Phoenix where it's got that fine thin Point uh just allows you to get in there and work on those coves and not have to worry about if the bevel is running because it's a small cutter so since it's a smaller cutter it's got It's tends to be less grabby so that's another good thing about using it so the number three Hercules and the Phoenix the largest Phoenix are the two main tools that I like to use when I'm doing resin turning but you know I've got a number of Hunter tools and you know so far I'm happy with pretty much all of them that's for sure another reason for the profile that I went with this week is I needed to get down inside to where the pods were if I had just left a classic vase shape then you would have seen not a lot of pod reveal at the very top the vase and there would have been more as you went closer to the base so by putting in these really deep coves you're going to expose more of the pods I mean really that's what this video is about is it's about the sweet gum pods uh the exotic wood that's in there that's that's the bling but by going deep into these coves like that you're going to expose more of those pods I don't know if it's I don't know if the tree typically produces one size pod but if you had a variety of sizes then there wouldn't be any dead areas in the casting but these are awesome I love them well what do you think it's um it's different from what we usually have done that is for sure uh these you know these straight lines mimic the straight lines and the piece I don't know anyway I got a late start today so that's the end of the day I'll think on it uh tonight and but you know I might try and Dish this out a little further give it some more profile oh tell me in the comments what you think at this stage anyway see you tomorrow so this is the next day and I you know before we can do any hollowing in this piece we need to get rid of this waste block I initially started to part the waste block off without the tail stock in place and I said no that's probably not a good idea even though the piece is being supported by the steady rest uh I just brought up the tail stock and just put very light pressure on it and then that way when it does come free hopefully it doesn't fly off and you know hit you in the face because nobody wants that yeah I figured that we would use the one-way captive hollowing system in order to take the inside of the vase out if you haven't seen this before this is a laser and right now I've got it set at about an inch and an eighth you can see it on my finger there and close that up as we go and of course that just helps you not go through the side of your project we do have to take about an inch out of the very base of here but um pretty much just straight in I'm not going to mimic these curves on the inside and uh the hollowing rig shouldn't be hitting on the steady rest either because we're just going straight in and out all right let's get her done if you're wondering I certainly could have taken the inside of this phase out by hand uh but again for for the people that are not aware of it I am left-handed and I do find it uh awkward to work over the lazy bed like normal right-handed woodturners will do so this here is a really good option for me and other left-handed people um the inside of this went fairly smooth I stuck with the straight boring bar I think I sharpened the teardrop cutter twice uh the other good thing about having a large opening like this is that eventually I'll be able to move the um the tool rest inside of the vase as well that way you're getting better support and the boring bar doesn't tend to vibrate as much when it gets deep inside the casting [Music] the only real concern that I've noticed with the teardrop cutter that comes with this system is that if you do expose too much of an edge to the side of your project and your you can get I'll call it a catch pretty serious catch uh especially if the piece isn't uh trued up yet so I noticed that earlier on and then I sewed them I moved the teardrop cutter so the point was more to the left and then that way you're not exposing as much of The Cutting Edge to the wood too much Cutting Edge and you could be in a world of hurt you could break something like this apart so keep an eye out for that if you decide to use a teardrop cutter with the system or any other system as far as that's concerned so I noticed that there's some rubber on there and uh looks like my wheels are breaking down I think maybe I've got too much pressure on them anyway they're just disintegrating so I've got some other Wheels here so that shouldn't be that big of a problem yeah I must have it too tight so I guess you got to be careful not to put these down too tight or else they'll definitely get destroyed one's on the other side still seem to be okay think we'll have a look at them too but anyway I'll be back in a minute so I've got the new wheels on there well the new to me wheels these are actually out of an inline skate and it's kind of funny because last um last week somebody mentioned how often you change your wheels and like well I never have never needed to because I you know it doesn't see a ton of use uh but there's a number of issues with some of these wheels this one's probably the nicest of them this one of course all delaminated and I believe that's where the rubber was coming from this one here like it it's all like coming off of the bead if you will and kind of squashed out here on one side so yeah no wonder I was having issues so anyway I'll keep an eye on it I guess I gotta look out for new wheels and if anybody has a suggestion on good Wheels I'll take it so some quieter Wheels would definitely be a bonus uh it's actually surprising how loud they are and again I think last week I left it at 20 volume and that's what that is too it's only at 20 so it's quite loud uh anyway these ones did the trick I did see that there's some play in them so they're definitely gonna have to be replaced here in the relatively near future uh all I did was uh during spring cleanup years ago I went around and and looked in the trash and found some inline skates uh our two kids or two boys had some inline skates so I grabbed some some of the wheels off of those but uh they were wore down a lot of them were down pretty bad so I just happened to drive by and noticed that there were some inline skates in the trash and like hey I can I know what I can use them for so that's a cheap place for wheels for those that want to make their own steady rest like this but um if I can get a line on some quieter ones I I certainly think that I'll buy them put them on uh and there is some there is some play in these bearings on these wheels too so it's uh I don't know hard to say how long it's going to last so I should get some new ones ordered as I said in the past that it's important to wear some sort of respirator wall turning and you may have noticed that I'm wearing the power cap while I'm working on this piece I know that there's some people want me to do a review on this and that will be coming I'll probably just briefly talk about it in one of the upcoming videos but I need to use it more before I can give you a firm opinion on what I think of it early indications are that it's it that it's good uh there's some things that I would like to see improved on it but you know for the most part I'm pretty happy with the purchase price was a little up there though I'm gonna be honest well there's look inside things are cut very cleanly I'm quite happy with that I think I will do a resin finish on the inside I don't know I might do it on the outside too we'll have to see a little undecided on keeping this or not you've got again straight lines so it kind of goes with the outside of the piece but there's a big part of me that's saying round this off and go inside the vase I don't know I don't know I might just leave it the way it is I need to do some thinking on it do have some filling to do so we don't UV epoxy and do that but yeah I mean yeah I know I'm Gonna Leave it I'm not gonna I'm not gonna mess with it I'm Gonna Leave It all right uh sanding the inside next since I'm going to do a resin finish on the inside of this there's no reason to sand this any higher than 320 you could probably get away with 220. I decided to go to 320 on this piece so I the difference between doing a resin finish over wood and doing a resin finish over resin is that if there's sanding scratches in the resin when you put the U or when you put the epoxy on top of that it's going to fill in all those little scratches and you're not going to see them however when you do that on top of wood you're going to see them so it's best to get rid of any sanding scratches that you can prior to doing any resin finishes now as far as sanding with the drill I was having issues getting things nice and flat on the inside so that's why I switched to the to the sanding block and then once everything was sanded flat then I was able to go back and power sand because power sanding will always give you a better surface than using your hands like I am there yeah there I'm finishing off with power sanding all right as we listen to the rain come down outside we're going to use some UV resin this is from designer epoxy and very few holes in this piece surprisingly I was really worried that there was going to be a ton of holes but just up near the top here were of the resin had had mosquitoes had disappeared so it left a few little holes behind so I'll fill those with the UV epoxy trim it up and then we'll get right back to sanding the outside there I'll just use this for about three and a half minutes or so and uh do the other spots and then we'll get back to sanding so I just want to take a final pass on the vase and of course it's pretty hard to do that with a steady rest in the way so it had to go so yeah very very light Cuts here and I was holding my breath the whole time especially out near the rim as you get closer to the base it's certainly not an issue but out near the rim is like man if I get a catch here this uh this could be all for naught so if you're in the same situation as that make sure you just take very late cuts and it should be fine so after trimming I'm quite happy with the surface so we'll be able to move on with sanding there were a couple of spots that needed to be filled after I think I sanded to 180 and had to look at things that I need to fill a couple of areas the resin on the inside was done because there were some small little voids in there and I figured that it was just easier to just throw some I actually used some Pro Series on the inside of this piece and I'll explain a little bit why I use that over the aircast but um very happy with the finish on this piece there's there's a couple spots that need to be done on the outside I think UV having the addition of UV resin in my in my inventory is one of the big big pluses uh you can just move on with your project so fast you can fill in large holes and you don't have to worry about foaming so once everything was sent 800 this is the Tripoli buffing compound from the be all buffing system and then once we're done with that we'll clean it up with some denatured alcohol and get our first coat of finish on all right exciting times this is the first coat of water Luxe gloss there you go what do you think of that we'll do the resin finish later those pods are really cool I'm not sure if I'll do the resin coat today maybe tomorrow it's pretty late it's been a long day anyway yeah we'll probably see you tomorrow so this is the next day and we're using the pro series it's something like 7 30 in the morning the reason why I want to use the pro series is because between 8 to 12 hours after mixing it's dry to the touch so if you get out there early enough in the morning you can do a resin coat on the inside and then it would be set up good enough that you can then put finish on the outside of the piece so that's the great thing about it pro series is mainly used for countertops and Floors it's very durable but it is a little cloudy so it's best to mix it with colors when you're using it but an eighth of an inch or less it's clear all right well it is nine hours after I poured the resin this morning and uh it's dry to the touch I definitely wouldn't uh stick my fingernail in it but you know it looks pretty darn good all right let's get the second coat up you may have noticed in the previous clip that I set the epoxy in a tub of water and that's warm water and that was just to make sure that it's nice and thin so it flows well so before the next coat goes on we're going to use the Tripoli buffing compound again and then once that's done we'll clean it off with denatured alcohol and we'll be able to move on with the next coat finish okay this is the second coat of waterloox gloss this time around when I cleaned it with the denatured alcohol there was hardly any residue come off of the vase unlike the first coat that was put on big difference well there you go I think that that's all it's going to need I don't think it's going to need any more than that uh yeah I'm really grooving this piece man it is nice beautiful resin sweet gum pods are pretty awesome too all right we'll see you tomorrow when we're doing the bottle so this is the next day and I decided to try my vacuum Chuck here um pinching it between centers might have been a safer way to do it but um giving it a pretty good slap to see what's going to take place I if you're curious I think this is the eight inch drum I've got on here and this is all from oneway.ca you can get their entire system there I decided to just use the the bowl gouge to get rid of the MDF and then I switch back to the Hercules very light Cuts here uh seem to take forever to get rid of the excess resin on the very bottom of the vase here and uh and that's just because I was really airing on the side of caution and just taking very late cuts once I'm done with the tooling here it's sanded from 60 to 400 I didn't want to go any higher on that because there was a lot of details that had to go on the bottom of this and I find you know really six hundredths about the max if you go any higher than that it's the surface is quite hard to write on and for those who are curious I'm using a pilot V5 black pen that's what I used right on the bottom of my the pieces that I make all right let's have a last little chat about this beautiful vase uh it is certainly one of the best I've ever done all right so before we get started we think about my new hat I got this from the Royal Canadian Legion Birth of a Nation on the side of it and of course this is Vimy Ridge if you're curious you want to look it up it's uh pretty cool to see what we did there in the first World War AOA this is a beautiful vase I got some dimensions for you it is actually six pounds two ounces and that's 2.7 kilograms I gotta look this up written down uh it is eight and a half inches across and eight inches tall and that's 21.6 centimeters across and 20.3 centimeters tall and it varies throughout the piece but 5 8 to three quarters is the thickness and that is 16 millimeters in thickness so it's a it's a beefy turning I love the weight of this piece I really think that to Showcase those pods that that was the direction to go with this indenting it that that would give you a fuller range of the piece getting so shiny uh just two coats of water looks and the Purple Heart and the Paducah I think really kind of add to it as well there's the inside of it I know that I didn't really show it all that much after it was done but it's actually very nice for one coat uh that Pro Series is actually really good for this you'd use it more often actually now it's a little hard to see because the bottom is really busy but you might be able to pick it up if I can get the shine right very tough to see though ah but it looks good except for where the wood Pieces come in it needs to be redone so another coat and then it will be ready to go to its new home and this piece is for sale if you're interested in it let me know spragwoodturning gmail.com and I will disclose the price there uh I've been debating on trying to put things maybe on an eBay auction I know that there was last week's piece there was a it was very popular a lot of people wanted it so let me know what you think about that I would have to put a reserve on it but uh eBay auction might be the way to go and then that way everybody's got a chance to to get something if they want it but I really love this piece and those coves really kind of set the straight pieces of the paduke and the purple off I think anyway let me know in the comments what you think don't forget to put designer epoxy in the comments down below to be entered into the three gallon giveaway kit at a hundred thousand when we get there uh we are finally over 95 000 so the giveaway will for my project will be next week so please come on back for that and of course the epoxy giveaway is only for Canada and the lower 48 U.S states uh uh I've started working on next week's project already and as per normal there's some there's some bumps in the road so it seems to be the uh the norm around here um mind you this one here is pretty smooth so I can't complain about that uh anyway let me know in the comments what you think about this week's video and of course that's where we're going to get the next winner from the comments every 5 000 subscribe subscribers I give away a project of some sort so please leave a comment down below and um let me know about the eBay auction if you think that that is something that we should do all right take care stay safe don't forget the Bell please share my videos with your friends and we'll see you next week [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Sprague Woodturning

Views: 75,951

Keywords: woodturning, wood turning, resin, resin art, epoxy, made in canada, petawawa, ontario, ottawa, hunter tool systems, designer epoxy, starbond, sandpaper.ca, resin casting, woodworking, vase, sweetgum pods, padauk, purple heart

Id: 5kKVIm2SlmM

Length: 43min 4sec (2584 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023