Woodturning - Twisted copper wire and soapstone inlay

hi everybody it's a new week it's a beautiful day so I thought I'd do another in late so this week we're gonna do twisted copper in lace now what I'm gonna do and I'll show you how to make this nice twist of copper because I'm going to embed it in the rim of this bowl and around the copper wire I'm actually going to take powdered soapstone combine it with CA glue and we're gonna make an inlay in it and the great thing about these types of inlays is as you're twisting it you can make it kind of longer or you can make it tighter like this and the other thing too is when you're sanding this inlay bak as you're sanding it back you'll actually get you know it will give you different looks you know I'll show you as we go along and it'd be interesting to see which one you like the best so you can comment down below I'd be kind of cool like I like in the beginning I like to near the end you know whatever so yeah that's this week's project so anyway let's get to the lathe get the bolt route up and sand it and coat of finish on it and then we can carry on with the inlet okay so before we cut the groove in the rim of the bowl it's all sanded up now this is actually the ground wire out of that host wire thirteen three or something like that so what I like to do is mount one end and the vise and as you can see it's all kind of Ripley grab it with my pliers straighten it and yeah if you're only doing one of these you can use the ground wire but you don't have to go through the hospital stripping the insulation off if you do it's not really that big of a deal so here nothing goes nice and easy so the reason why I haven't cut the groove yet is because depending on how you twist this wire how tight it is it will actually change the diameter of the wire and we want this wire to actually fit tightly into the inlet so we need to make sure that we have first of all the right size right size that we're looking for and that we actually cut the groove for the end like properly so this end this is how I twist it is another Wiese pull these along so they're even in this other end get some out into my drill now make sure that when you put it in the drill that the wires are both seam tightness on it okay so I'm going to pull this tight start there hopefully that's a little closer you'd be able to see this so you can see it's quite loose right now and that's fine I've put them in like this in what I want to do after this is inlaid I want to basically sand through these upper ridges to expose the wires in this direction and in this direction so it's best if it's a little tighter again I'll keep them I'm keeping it quite tight here and there that should be good one thing that you want to consider or one thing you want to keep in mind is that the more you twist this together the shorter this becomes so when you wrap this around if it's not big enough to meet the diameter of your bowl then after we do it and get a longer piece of wire but this is just some wire we had laying around from an old construction job and again it'll be reused okay so we're getting ready to cut the groove now ordinarily this is the parting tool that I use it's three sixteenths the problem is so you can see that if you cut the groove with that this is going to become loose in there so I just happened to have a parting tool that's in eighth of an inch and it should be pretty darn close to what we want either way if it's too if the groove isn't big enough I can go back and you just touch it a little bit and then this should fit perfectly okay so I've cut the end off one in there and let's just see how this is gonna fit so this is a little loose yeah I probably could have used another one but you know what that's fine I'll put that in there I'll just hit it with a little bit of CA glue and we'll work all the way around the bowl and it'll be just great anyway yeah in a perfect world this would be just snug as it goes in and then that way you don't have to fight with it to keep it in place the other thing too is when you've cut when you cut this groove in the in the top here you've got to make sure that you go straight in with the tool if you go in on an angle it will measure differently from the surface to where it is in the bottom because it's actually going to be smaller or larger so I know eight if you go straight you won't have any issues okay so time to measure this and cut it you can get it put in and here so as you can see we just had just enough really good what an inch to spare and so this is why it's nice if it's nice and snug you don't have to worry about popping out so I'm going to mark this off and I'm gonna mark it probably just a little bit long and I'll just cut it off with some side cutters and then I'll put it back in and check it for fit and if it's a little harder well nip off a little bit more and so on and so on at this transition joint where they come together it's going to be you know you're probably gonna see that in the end but it's still a pretty cool in life okay again try and cut it off as straight as you can there's that's pretty darn good so again I'll go around after I put a coat of finish on and I'm gonna tell you why I put a coat of finish on so the inlays are held in with thin CA glue and of course you want that glue to flow in and lock this all inside in the groove it we're you know the groove that I've cut for the inlay but the problem is if you happen to overflow this because remember we're gonna put soapstone on top of this and so we're gonna be saturating and sometimes it'll run down over the edge and under the end grain now if you've got raw wood with no finish on it and that thin CA glue it will wick right into the end grain on the bowl so we don't want that if it goes on the side green that's not so bad it still might stain a little bit but it's pretty much a guarantee that you'll have a glue mark now on your bowl sometimes it depends on the wood but you know I find that by putting that coat of finish on there it's something I don't have to worry about so we'll throw a coat of finish on this after that's dry we'll put the inlay in it and so yeah first go to finish coming up that's always the best part okay first coat finish now there's a couple of reasons why I do that as I said before because of the glue but also on the inside here I like to seal the inside somewhat it's still quite rough and still quite porous but if you seal it with a coat of finish there'll be less of a tendency for the glue to wick through the end green and stain the outside of the inside of the bowl so that's another reason why I do it and this is again a salad bowl finish by general finish's I just put it in these squeeze bottles just to it's easier to use so I'll put this on here really heavily saturate it it was not even really all that important to do this face because it's gonna be sanded back anyway so yeah the squeeze balls you tend to certainly waste less of it because it's not cheap and whatever excess there is I will wipe it off and anyway you put this out in the Sun maybe for a little oh what an hour probably good enough for it and then we'll yelling it there while we're waiting for the finish to cure up a little bit on their back the roughing okay so the finish has dried good enough that we can carry on with the inlay so what I'm gonna do and I've already cut this to length cause I want to place it in and I'm just going to go around and put it down with seeing to hold it in place starting at the beginning where I put it in here and then I'll work my way around the wall just putting this down I've also got a little pick tool like this so I can put it in there and kind of pull it along so that it's nice and tight here in the end I don't think you're gonna get much better than that does that seem they're pretty good so I'm just gonna go I'm just gonna get around and hit it with glue and spots and push down on it so that it stays in place and for some using star bond thin like I always do for all my inlays and of course the accelerator so I don't want to start right here because it may wick over did the end on the other side which I don't want put some glue in there just push down on it make sure that it's seated and just work your way around making sure that it's all the way down on the bottom and the reason for that is if it isn't flat rate on the bottom and it's lifted in some areas the inlay when this is sanded back will look different now this year in itself could make a really nice inlay just fill this full of CA glue let it set sand it back you could use epoxy as well and I have but I think for this one we're going to use the soapstone so I'll get that ready and I'll show you how that's done okay let's talk the soapstone so I get my stuff from a variety of different sources just do a search online and find out where you can get it this block of soapstone actually came from Lee Valley and what I do is I smash it up with a hammer and then run it through the strainer as you can see it's quite fine and then that way it will give me some really fine inlaid material so what I'll do is I'll place this in the groove and I'll knock on the side of the bowl try and knock it down and around the wire itself and then I'll hit it with the CA glue yeah so anyway oh the other thing I should mention too is make sure that your inlay space is clean so this this is a reusable pad that I use and you can see there's got duct tape on it and most probably butcha layers on it but it's clean so that that way the stuff can get dumped out of the bowl afterwards and it's not contaminated it was sawdust and there's nothing worse than doing these inlays and then if you see a tiny little piece of sawdust or something that doesn't look like you should be there so in a way make sure your is clean make sure you blown yourself off with the air guns so that nothing's gonna fall off you onto the inlay to contaminate it so anyway I just go along here like this I'll fill this up and then just use a handle on a screwdriver and on the boy no I just take my favorite I don't push down on it I just kind of plow it off if it's indented a little bit on the inlay that's probably going to be more beneficial than having it proud of the surface and this so we'll put this back on the lathe and we'll have to fill this at least another two or three more times until we get all of the voids filled just kind of the nature of the beast when you're working with natural materials and you know you could take a resin if you wished and put it over top of this that's you know a solid in color and then sand it back it would give you the same same effect and you know resins for me certainly are on the horizon I'm going to got some ideas for them but the I like the natural look of the soapstone so I think we're about ready for the glue here it's important that you use the thin CA if you try to use medium or thick this is not going to work you want this to migrate through the inlay and then lock into the pores of the wood so here's the thin that I use now as you can see it doesn't really want to go into it initially once the inlay gets wet it will absorb the glue a lot better and there's not a lot of inlay material err anyway I'll do so i'll do solid inlays that are you know are this wide of soapstone and other natural materials now you could have used alabaster in here you want something that's easy to sand if you took shell material and put it in amongst this then you're gonna have you're gonna have a lot of sanding see there's why you put the first coat of finish on too busy talking one should be watching what I'm doing and ordinarily I would just go around the ball hear about them travel keep it in the shot for you here in and that's not a big deal it's know that finishes on there I'll be able to sand that oh quite easily and I was gonna sand the inside of this again anyway it's just best if you don't do it if it all looks wet then you know that it's not going to take any more glue and what I'll do is I'll leave this overnight and then we'll sand this back tomorrow and fill it and sand it until we get what we want again use this stuff in a well-ventilated area the fumes that come off with CA glue when they're curing can be quite aggressive now I could hit that with the accelerator if I wanted to but I'm not going to because there's no need for it I'll just let that continue to wick in and then I can guarantee you it's not coming out so we'll put this on late tomorrow and that's what we do you'll see it more okay so it's the next day or in late should be good and dry yesterday I was saying that what I wanted to do was sand through this upper part but I realized last night that if you do that and this happened to me before there's not enough material wrapped around the copper wire to hold it in place now what I've done here is I've this is the same wire I've just folded it over on itself again and if he did sand through the top here exposing the ends of the wires you'd be fine because the wire would be mostly encased in the soapstone and the CA glue and it's not going to come out then so all we're gonna do is sand back exposed it just the top layer of this and it should give us kind of like a herringbone pattern maybe what we'll find out here in a sec okay so to sand the inlay back this is 60 grit on a random air-powered round orbital sander and initially I'll just sand this off with the lathe off just to get the glue in any high spots down then I'll turn the lathe on and of course use this to sand it back to the inlay and I may have to stop every now and then enhance and in certain areas if if this wire isn't perfectly flat and the groove is if it's lifted in anything any of the spots you'll last it'll look differently but hopefully that's not the case but we'll find out here in a minute and I'll actually probably bring you in closer so you can sit get a better look at it as the copper is exposed [Music] ladies so as you can see the inlay is now or sorry the copper wire is now starting to come through the soapstone so what I'm gonna do now is we're gonna take it off the lathe go over fill some holes and then hit it with the CA glue again and then I'll bring it back sand it back again until we don't have any little voids or anything like that and then yeah we'll just finish sanding it and get another coat of finish on okay so she's filled again and ready to cut it back again with a 60 grit I'm not going to go much deeper than this because you got to remember we still got to sand this out to 320 possibly 400 if we want to take all these kind of these scratch marks out of the copper so there are still some areas where it's a little wider like here compared to here and then I'll try and like I said make that all look the same with the random orbital sander and then we'll sand it with the three and a half inch disks so I'm not sure what happened there in the camera shut off anyway I filled it again and sanded it back and now I'm just going to move to the mice like three and a half inch pads equol my drill and just cut this back it's still gonna need some filling in spots but I figure I'll do that after I get it sand it to 320 Paul just do a final filling and then hit it with the 320 again to cut it back and that's it she should be done so there I'll just fill this again hit it with the 320 and that should be it and there's where our two pieces came together and it's just off little bit hopefully you can pick that up it's not exactly the it's not exactly the easiest thing to film okay this is second coat usually don't squirt onto the bowl the second into third coat usually just put it on the rag and then wipe it on there you go now this was earlier in the day it could third codon later on but we're a little leap today so laughs a week till tomorrow okay last go to finish for oh steel wool okay here's the last coat it's important that if you're going to use the four oh steel wool between coats that you really take the time to blow it out really well the steel wool has a habit of embedding in the pores of the wood alternative to that you could use the scotch brite pad but I do find that sometimes they are a little bit too aggressive so that's why I like to use a real fine four-oh steel just make sure that you blow your you blow the bowl off really good before you put on your next coat finish by the way we'll let this set up I'll cut it off the waste block finish the bottom and then we'll we'll talk about it here this can't go wrong with walnut [Music] [Music] okay so that's it for the video the bottom is done now in signed I still got one more coat of finish to put on but that's it and here's our inlay try to show this so that you can actually see it and yeah it's just copper going across and of course with the soapstone around it I'll try and put some stills up at the end show it off a little better and again this is the same wire that's been folded over on itself and that's kind of what you can get and you can get different looks the more attention you put on that wire as you're screwing it will actually change what it looks like so give that a try and anyway as always if you like what you see in here please hit that like button it certainly helps with my channel and also if you can share it that'd be great as well and if you're new here and you haven't subscribed please consider doing that so take care stay safe and see you at the next video you

Channel: Sprague Woodturning

Views: 215,358

Keywords: inlay, woodturning, wood turning, copper, soapstone, general finishes, petawawa, made in canada, spraguewoodturning, sprague woodturning

Id: kv8RD9LvS0M

Length: 37min 26sec (2246 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020