Woodturning - The Bunya Pine Cone Hollow Form

everybody's jim from sprague woodturning this week we are going to take some bunya nut pine segments and combine them with uh deep cast from designer epoxy now i don't know where the initial footage went of me doing the first initial pour but it's gone so i'm sorry about that there's just really nothing i can do about it but what i've done is i've combined these pine segments that were sent to me by ernie from australia so i really appreciate that he sent me a big bag of them he said look jim see what you can do with this and [Music] this is what i came up with so i've taken these pine segments stuck them in these are plastic fruit trays you get at your your supermarket and um you know it's funny where inspiration comes from i was looking at this you know one morning and said hey this may make a great mold for a hollow form so that's what we're going to do this week well there's one i'll bring it back when i got the rest done it's going to be a while all right so there's our 10 pieces we won't be reusing this again don't worry i'll throw that in our recycling what i'm going to do now is go over and grind all this flat and i think i'll take off this little ridge part here and then we'll figure out what we're going to do with laying pieces of wood in here and if you know we're going to keep it like this or like this i'm not sure yet still figuring that out so as for normal i'm just flying by the seat of my pants here i uh you know in my mind i had kind of a vision but you know till you really start doing it you don't know exactly if it's gonna work out or not uh in this case i think that it did it's a very colorful hollow form and i think that it's um it's way up there on the the coolness scale of things that i've made in my resin career so far so you know i want to give the resin because we're going to combine these with another colored resin i want to give that a good tooth for the resin to stick to and the best way that i've found to do that is to just kind of clean things up here on the belt sander and then you'll also see me using a flap sander just to give the resin a little bit of a tooth for the new resin to bond to it uh really disappointed that i lost the initial footage of this i think my camera got full and just you know i deleted it by mistake a really really a bad monday morning let's call it that don't see me use this too often but we're going to use the thick ca glue from starbone and i'm just want to stick these pieces together so that they're not moving around uh you'll see why i kind of want them to stick around and anyway you know it's like i said earlier inspiration comes in different forms and i was sitting there having having breakfast and you know i like to have fruit with my with my breakfast and i looked down at this tray you know it was round and it had these different pockets and i said you know it'd be really cool if you could combine that with different colored resins and uh for a while i've been sitting on this with this bunion nut because i just really didn't know what to do and then one day like yeah that should work so those are walnut spacers that you're seeing me put in there and again it didn't fit perfectly in the bucket so i'm just using little spacers to make sure that things kind of stay where i want them to stay i don't want to put too much hot melt glue in here so i figured that this would be right and it certainly uh worked out in the end this week we're going to be using deep casting epoxy from designer epoxy and that's what the other segments are made with deep casting epoxy so everybody knows and the other colors that i've used are pearl gold blue laguna and emerald green if you're curious and now we're going to be combining all of those together with the crystal purple so yeah this thing is very very colorful all right this is probably not going to be enough but i will start with this and see what happens close probably another half liter all right so here's another half liter i know that that wood is going to absorb some of this and i want that thickness to i want the thickness to be maintained so a little bit extra resin here probably won't hurt all right let's see how much effort it takes to get this egg i don't know if you noticed it or not but there was a lot of voids in the bunion nut segments when i was grinding them back on the belt sander i was i thought that it was going to be an issue in the end it certainly wasn't so i'm really happy about that can't wait to get into this to see what we're dealing with here well there's one center there this is one of the great things about using a bucket uh typically when these buckets are made there's always a center point on them and that will of course be embossed in the resin when it cures so that's great and then i'm just using a pair of uh dividers here just to find center on the top side do so if you're new here this is the hercules that's what i'm using i really like using this tool when i'm doing any resin work it really does a good job eating up that resin and um so last week i asked people you know what would you like me to cover as far as topics are in these videos i realize a lot of this is very much similar every week so you know doing these voice overs will give me an opportunity to pass along some experience that i have um a few people wanted to basically kind of know the business side of of wood turning and you know that that's fine i can cover that a bit here in detail you know i'm not i don't consider myself to be an expert in that area but you know i certainly have gained a lot of experience over the years uh selling products so when i initially retired from the military i had already been turning for probably something like 18 years and so you know i had a good knowledge base and it didn't take me long to figure out that you know if you're gonna make it in this business you need to be unique um there's a lot of you know a lot of a lot of boosts with bowls in them they're very similar some are shiny some are dull but to really kind of make it in the woodturning world i needed to be different from others and i knew this prior to retiring and that's where my inlay work came from a lot of people either didn't want to go through the expense of doing it but i seen it as being unique and anytime that you're unique in any field it's probably going to draw more customers than say being just the same as everybody else that may change if you're up a bigger name in woodturning you know like david ellsworth like whoever right so but for the most part when you're first starting off in order to get that business you really need to be unique and that's that was one thing that i really focused on when i first started doing shows and you know i'm not going to lie it was a struggle trying to set show schedules and trying trying to figure out what shows are going to give you the best bang for your buck um i mean it's not an easy thing to figure out uh if you can find a mentor maybe not even somebody maybe not maybe another woodturner but somebody that's maybe woodworking and that's a professional woodworker that goes to shows and sells their their works online and that shows you know they can probably give you a lot of real good advice as to what shows to do in your area so you know it was um it was a struggle i mean i really probably for the first three years didn't really show much of a profit and things things were getting better and you know eventually if you stick with it um you can figure it out but you know it's not easy you've got to uh you've got to be really determined and i'll be honest with you i work probably seven days a week and you can ask my wife this i worked very very hard at my business to to make it successful and for it to turn a profit i but you know as you do these shows you will certainly figure out where is the best place to stay where is the cheapest place to stay um you know really it it all boils down to you know that basically the more cheaper you are on the show on the road the more money you're going to put back in your pocket and this is where a lot of show veterans can really give you some advice on where to stay uh you know and what shows to do just ask people hey you know like you did the show last year how was it a lot of people will say yeah don't go there or yeah that's definitely one you want to apply and you know the other thing too is i only did juried art shows the only exception of that would be a show that i would do here in the spring in petawawa other than that they're always juried art shows because you know you don't want to be set up next to somebody selling vacuum cleaners when you're selling two and three and four and five hundred dollar uh bowls and there's probably gonna be a lot of people that you know they they probably have googled me and searched me and all these got a website and they go to it and there's nothing to to buy and and that's you know the reason for that is because shooting these youtube videos just really kills your production it really truly does so i don't really typically have a lot of stock for sale um now that i've switched to youtube and um unlike a lot of things so for instance if you're selling iphones well you would put up a photo of that on your website and put a price on it and that never changes until the next model comes out with wood turnings every woodturning is unique so every time you sell that piece you have to download pictures download and upload pictures and it's a lot of website maintenance and you know my online game was really really weak i'll i'll be the first to admit that but you know i was working seven days a week as it was and i would i just really i focused on more being on the road and selling to customers on the road instead of being having an online presence but with that said you do definitely have to have a social media presence you cannot um you really need to you have to be good at promoting yourself and facebook instagram i don't do twitter i don't bother with twitter and i've got kind of a love-hate relationship with facebook too uh i had my my site was hacked once and to be perfectly honest with you facebook doesn't really typically um and i'm talking my business facebook site doesn't typically bring in a lot of business for me uh that typically uh most times now i'm getting contacted through youtube to buy uh stuff so you know but you definitely have to have that online presence because that's where people will share your work and of course the more people that share your work and see your work that should translate to more sales but get into this week's project uh as you can see i've got the outside shaped i've got a glue block on the bottom now because i want to make this piece as big as i can make it and right now i'm just pouring out the inside and we're getting ready to hollow this piece out and here i'm just using the hercules to make the opening a little wider before we proceed to hollowing one other thing that i will touch on so if you're looking to sell your works at shows go to these shows and see how woodturners are pricing their work i've been in plenty of shows where an amateur woodturner shows up whose work is every bit as good as mine but it's half the price and so you know they they in a sense devalue their work uh just because you know maybe they're hobbyist and you know most times i don't even really think that they they realize that they're doing it so you know it's and then you've got the professional woodturners that are actually trying to make a living at it and you know it's very tough to do that when you're competing with somebody that's that's really devalued their work so you know uh all i can suggest to you is go around and you know and look pick up the items that from other woodturners and value your work accordingly so that you know it's fair for everybody to to make a buck at it the other thing with as far as building your business is concerned there is no better way to build your business than to go to shows you can have an online business but you can never get the feedback from customers that you're going to need to improve your work so you know a lot of times customers would walk into my booth and they'd pick up a piece of wood and look at it and go wow you know then they'd set it down and and i would ask them and say hey i noticed that you were looking at a piece of wood at that bowl and you decided not to get it you mind telling me why and they say well you know it's too much money i don't like the color i don't like the inlay i don't like the resin like what whatever it is you can't get that from an online business so you know as far as uh making relationships with customers and trying to figure out exactly what's the best way to go about selling your works you cannot get that from an online business you can only get that from talking to customers at shows but uh get back to this week's project as you can see i've got the largest boring bar that that comes with the one-way captive system and i've actually got a little extender on it as well too so i was able to do the majority of the hollowing with that piece there you can see it right there but my laser quit halfway through this as well so that kind of burned me a little bit so i was kind of had to switch to mechanical measuring to make sure that i didn't go through the sidewall on this piece and you know certainly uh people that are listening if you're doing shows feel free to in the comments to give me your experience on on what you've determined to be the best way to go about selling your works at shows but i am a firm believer that you know before you really switch to an online presence with your website or with etsy or whatever that you know it's really important to get out and meet your customers and see what they like um see what pricing you can set things at and then you know kind of go from there um my hat's off to people that just have an online presence and they don't really go to these shows because these shows can be very expensive um and to give you an idea i used to do the one-of-a-kind show in toronto which is billed as you know the largest arts and crafts show in north america and i had a 5x15 booth and that would cost me 5 000 for 11 days not including hotels meals and traveling so it can get expensive so i've changed out to my bent knife profile here uh my laser has actually quit i think the battery's dead on it and i don't have another battery so we're just kind of winging it from here on yeah that laser in mind seems to eat up a lot of batteries that's probably the since i've changed the batteries i've only probably done four hollow forms maybe five so um again you know it's just uh it's that cheap woodturning hobby that we all love it can really start adding up over time here yay finally onto sanding so we are using three and a half inch nipple discs and that is on a two inch sanding pad that i've ground down it's probably about an inch inch and a half across that way there the uh the dimple disc wraps around it and you're able to actually even stand the upper part of that hollow form with that and you can see the amount of dust comes out that comes out of there it's really um doing quite a number i did have to do a little bit of filling here so i just took some of the thin ca glue from starbond and filled in any of those little soft spots from the uh bunya nut segments and you know i was i was really surprised i thought i was gonna have to do do a lot of filling and there was really not a whole lot um luckily all the the actual nuts were removed from the segments and all those little voids got filled in and just a little bit there wasn't i was really really i thought it was gonna be i thought it was in the category where i was gonna have to do a resin fish that's how much how many voids i thought i was gonna see so the piece was sanded to 800 and this is the triple e buffing compound from the be all buffing system and the transformation in the piece is really cool this over this overhead view of it is pretty neat you'll see it just really removes those fine scratches and gets it ready for its first coat finish well okay this is new this is waterlox original and you can see it's gloss so if you think that the bowls were shiny before wait do you see this i'm assuming so so what i'm going to do is just dump a bit of this down inside of here and make a mess while doing it i'm just going to move it around inside of this hollow form and then i'm going to put it upside down to drip out for i don't know 10 15 minutes and then we'll do the outside i've just got a little uh buttered plastic butter dish underneath that so we'll just let that drip out for a little bit and then i'll bring it back when we're doing the outside can't wait to see what this is going to look like all right that's been 10 minutes that's probably good enough i should also mention that i did use denatured alcohol to clean the surface prior to putting on any finish that's an important step don't forget to do that or else things might not work out for you very very cool i like how the resin has filled in those segments and i really like how the purple has really kind of gone around all of the the walnut strips and then you know it it's it's like it was kind of all meant to be very very cool i guess maybe it was meant to be right all right i'm just going to let this sit here and cure on the lathe it's the end of the day we'll see you guys in there tomorrow for the second coat what do you think i think it is awesome so this is the next day and of course before i put on the next coat of finish i'm going to use the tripoli buffing compound again and then clean the surface with denatured alcohol like it did prior to the first coat of finish going on all right so i'm going to show the can again i get a lot of requests as to what i'm using and again this is new for me gloss finish waterlox original i will say this is very similar to the original voc medium sheen uh it went on it covered beautifully and i'm really in love with this finish as well this is uh this might be one of the neatest things i've ever made that's for sure very very cool a little hard to show with the uh with it being mounted in the chuck but lots of color all right we'll see when we're doing the bottom i think this is it i don't think it's going to need any more than this it's covering really nice so here i've got the piece mounted on the vacuum chuck it is the next day and it's time to remove that glued on tenon and i again you know this was a hot melt glue tenon that i've glued on the bottom of this piece and it has gone through the hollowing process so you know if you're having delamination issues it's either the glue you're not getting enough on there it's not hot enough or i i always try to make sure that it's pushed really firmly against the bottom so that there isn't a lot of glue between the waist block and the piece that will certainly help keep vibrations to a minimum now we end up having some issues with this with this bottom and you'll see in in in the next few clips here as to what's going on but you know the vacuum chuck in my workshop is just an indispensable piece of equipment and i absolutely love that i've got it started sanding the piece i think i went to 320 and then i stopped because i noticed that there was an issue so you know again max flex when you're on the lathe these are things you're gonna have to deal with and you'll see how i make a recovery from this so after cleaning off the bottom now there's there's a couple of things that i really don't care for i don't like the fact that these uh walnut strips are not even so that's kind of bothering me i don't like the fact that the gold colored resin is coming through the bottom of the piece as well it is getting a little thin on the bottom but it would have been fine um when i was sanding it you could see this piece moving in i couldn't get rid of this very center piece and that's because it was starting to get thin but of course you're heating the resin and then it's you know there's a lot of vacuum pressure there and i needed a fair bit of acupressure because this is quite a heavy piece so last thing we want to see is how this go fly so what i'm going to do is mount this piece of walnut between centers and we're going to put a base on the bottom of this bowl the other thing or this hollow form the other real thing that i don't like about it is when it's sitting down on the table it's really squat i'll change the camera and i'll show you so on the bench here you know it just to me it just seems kind of squat and fat looking so you know even if you lift it up just a little bit just to give the piece a little bit of height i think that it will add to the look of it so that's why i'm going to go and put the walnut base on the bottom of this so uh that's next so this is the way my brain works you know on the lathe that seemed to look fine to me and then when i sat it down on the bench i'm like you know i don't like that it just looks fat and heavy and the combination of the walnut strips not being the same length they're like no you know i've got a i've got to correct this or else it would have been bothering me for all time so that's why i decided to add this base and the fact that you know it was getting a little thin on the bottom too so that certainly will help in that regard too all right so i've mixed up a little bit of art cast it's got some bubbles in it but that really doesn't matter for this case i'm just looking for the right amount of resin squeeze out here so got to be uh can't give it too much that's not enough base is a little concave and i also made the uh the walnut block little concave as well or convex i should say yeah you can see it's squeezing out as you can see we're gonna have to basically redo the bottom of this but i would sooner do that than uh let this go the way it is there i think that's good there just throw my rock on it wave up any extra that's good we got resin squeezing out basically all over this and that's exactly what we want make sure it's centered all right i'll leave this overnight and we will carry on with tomorrow so essentially the same process as removing the waste block uh again you have to be careful you've really only got one shot at this so if you take away too much in size then you know it's it's probably going to look odd i did taper it slightly just to give it a little more pizzazz if you will and i also did as you'll see here in a minute kind of groove out the inside of it so that it's sitting on a true foot uh it is important to make the base of your of your bowls concave that way if there's anything sitting on the table like some salt or crumbs or whatever it if the bowl sits down on it then it's not going to rock back and forth so here i'm cutting in kind of a true foot on the very bottom of this and then of course this piece was since it's all wood i just sanded the wood itself to 320. and then the outside of the form um the way that i approach these is that i will start at 60 and then i'll go a little ways up the form and then the next grit i'll go a little bit further and then the next grit a little bit further up the form until you get to 800 and then it's all blended in and you'll never know that this foot wasn't intended on being there now that we got the details on the very bottom back onto the vacuum chuck and this piece also the very bottom got two coats of finish and again i just kind of spread the finish further up the piece until it was all blended in all right let's have a last little chat about this week's project very very cool uh hopefully you guys think the same thing because i really really enjoyed this uh it was fun figuring when he sent me those those bunion nut segments i'm like what am i going to do with this and uh well anyway here it is i think it's very very cool i am rather surprised i thought that i was going to see a lot more voids in the nut segments as it is or the pine segments as it is but overall i mean i was very very happy with it here's the very base and everything has of course three coats of the gloss water looks on there uh it's quite hefty i'll tell you that right now and you know i just i really like how the purple has blended in everything where there was little indents in the pieces you know it's just i don't know it's very very cool really really like it all along the top and of course having that little foot on the bottom to elevate it up off the table that's right up my alley um piece ended up being nine and a half inches across and four and a half inches tall and uh this piece is available so if you're interested send me an email to spragwoodturning at at gmail.com and i can disclose the price uh there is a lot of work in this and a lot of resin so it won't be going cheap all right so um next week we've got a really nice colorful wood and resin hollow form coming up again so please come on back for that and of course if you can see an inner hearts to give me a thumbs up for this week's video that would be awesome i would really appreciate that and please don't forget to comment because that's where we're going to get the next winner of the giveaway bowls we're going to pick from the comments uh we're sitting at 63 over probably over 60 63 000 when this airs so please leave a comment down below so that you can be entered into that draw alright well that's it until next week take care stay safe don't forget that bell please share my videos with your friends see you next week you

Channel: Sprague Woodturning

Views: 57,990

Keywords: Resin, resin art, epoxy, woodturning, wood turning, woodworking, made in canada, petawawa, ontario, ottawa, hunter tool systems, designer epoxy, starbond, sandpaper.ca, inlay, resin casting

Id: SdUlaD36sNk

Length: 34min 41sec (2081 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 12 2022