I have taken a couple pieces of very weathered and grub infested log sections and as a first step cut them to size and spent a good deal of time cleaning the undesired material out. The wood is very weak and punky, so stabilization before the epoxy is being tried.
One of the pieces cut, cleaned of crud and stabilized. Now the excess stabilization needs to be cleaned off.The four primary pieces for the bowl casting.Vacuum chamber containing the wood pieces in the stabilization fluid before turning on the vacuum pump. The added marbles are to take up some of the volume between the pieces. The stabilization liquid is quite expensive, so I use the marbles to fill gaps.With the vacuum applied, lots of foam comes to the surface. This process took about 24 hours with the vacuum being cycled on and off.Project 89 – had to modify the bucket to fit into the pressure pot which will come after adding epoxy to the bucket in the vacuum chamber.Project 89 – Added the wood strips and steel block to keep the wood from floating. Most of the pieces likely would not have been problematic as they were stabilized before, but didn’t want trouble. My daughter gave me the googly eyes for the steel block as another turner, @SpragueWoodturning on Youtube, has googly eyes on his rock called Dwayne. I shall call my steel block “BOB” after the Ironman actor.Project 89 – BOB seems to be floating in the bubbles of the epoxy as the vacuum sucks them out of the submerged wood. The project, including BOB, is now in the pressure pot at 60psi for a few days.The casting after being removed from bucket.Casting mounted on the lathe. This casting is heavy and was a challenge to attach. Plan to start turning next week during some cool morning.This is what you get with epoxy turning.Rough turned it today and trying to decide on the final shape. Shop is too hot to do more today.Made a small weir to control added copper colored epoxy to a hole in the base. Also filled other small holes.Added a tenon on the base and reversed the project on the lathe. Here I have attached my home-built stead-i-rest to stabilize the blank while I hollow out to make the vase.Hollowing has started.I removed the tailstock, lowered the extention and moved the headstock to the other end so I can work outboard and so better able to work deeper into the vase. I changed the taper and added beading near the bottom. A coat of clear epoxy was added after rough sanding to fill small voids. I will then reattach it to the lathe once set and sand to a fine finish before adding the finish coats. Then I will work on the bottom.
