Routed Turning

  This is a pretty nice piece of Hawaiian Koa, and it's 12" wide and 5 " tall. Thereabouts anyway. 
I decided to try routering this one to kind of replicate a crystal bowl. Below are some shot as I went along.  
  

Finally the sanding part is done. The picture on the left is sanded and buffed. The one on the right has one coat of Danish Oil on it. I'll oil and buff it 2 or 3 more times. 

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   This is my latest shot at routing a vessel. The main body is Mango.  The base and band are made from Koa. It stands 12" tall and is 12 5/8" at the widest point. Once it has dried completely I can finish the sanding and start applying the Danish Oil finish.

Pen Turning

  Ok, this is a bit different. I've turned a few pens before, but not like these. Instead of wood I used aluminum. I started with a 5/8 inch round piece of 6016 aluminum and turned it on my wood lathe using my 1/2 inch bowl gouge. You can see a few more pictures on my Pen Turnings page.

Routed Turning

  This is the beginning of a Milo routed urn. I'm going to router in 30 horizontal flutes. At least thats the plan. But first things first, we need a shape.

  The wood that will make the lid has been cut off and the shape starts to develop. Once the outside is done then I move onto the inside. As you can see in the picture to the right I drilled this one to the bottom just to make life easier.

  And there we have it. This piece measures 6" at the widest point and almost 10" tall. I like the shape myself, I just hope thing don't go south when the routing begins.  

  Well I forgot to take some pictures of the laying out process, go figure. You can see the lines that were put on the turning though. I do this so I can check the spacing. All of the layout was done with my laptop hooked up to a stepper motor and a indexer program. Then I use my homemade router jig to cut the flutes. On this particular turning I used a 3/8" round nose bit set to 1/8" deep. 

  There it is. Sanded and ready to go in the Danish Oil. Once it's completely finished it will be posted on my Routed Turnings page. I gave this one the title of  Fluten.

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  Four more Ku'oho shape turnings. The one to the right is made from Mulang that was harvested in the Waimea area here on the Big Island. It is also known as Himalayan Magnolia. There isn't many of the tree on the island so you don't run across it to often. This one is pretty nice, but has no curl.  

   Here's one you don't see to often. Java Plum or also known as Hawaiian Plum. This a really nice piece, you can see that it has a great deal of curl that extends about 3/4 of the way around it. It's going to be a beauty when it got a finish on it

  This one is made from Rainbow Shower. It was cut from the crotch of the tree, so there are two centers or pith areas. Because of the stress being released when it was turned it cracked from the top down. Looks like there will be a need for some butterflies in this one. 

  This one is made from Naio. Also known as False Sandalwood or Bastard Sandalwood. The rectangular spot on the one on the right is a patch that I put in because there was a bark inclusion I will be adding some stitching to that area before finishing.    

The Ku'oho Collection

Buffing and Danish oil finish

7 New Ku'ohos

Jacaranda

Black Wattle

Norfolk Pine with lite spalting

Lama Wood

Lychee

Hau

Rainbow Eucalyptus

Another Cook Pine Ku'oho

This one has started to spalt.

Turned from a nice piece of Kou from Molokai

Pride of India, the horizontal lines you see is some curl in the wood

Koa that was harvested in Volcano on the Big Island

Kamani from here on the Big Island in an area called Kapoho

group setting

Rotated 180 Kou will darken with age.

Rotated 180

The other side

Back side

Yes they are the same size

Ohia Ku 'oho

Ohia, to my understanding only grows on the islands of Hawaii. It's a very hard wood but does have a tendance to want to crack, needs to dry very slowly.  

I forgot to photo it in the rough, it has ceder treat on it so that gives it the wet look.

Rotated 180 degrees

The set starts to grow

Cook Pine Ku 'oho

  This is going to be part of a set  for Jim in Delaware. There will be 7 types of Hawaiian woods 

Ready to start,bark and all

Roughed out ready to start sizing

Foots gone and looking pretty good. Is it leaning? No it's a bad photographer.

Looks pretty even to me.

Turned down to about 7 inch, Checking the knots.

Held over a light to check the bottem thickness.

And there you are one Milo and one Cook Pine. Notice how the Milo has started to darken.

Milo Ku 'oho 

Today I'm going to be starting a Ku 'oho for Jim in Delaware. So Jim I'll be posting pictures as I go with a little explanation. I might even do some video.  

This is Milo that was harvested on Molokai over a year ago. The dark area, also known as the heart is right at 6 inches. when it's done I want it to have at lest one spot of white on it just for the contrast. So Jim this looks like it 's going to be a 6x6 Ku 'oho

First thing your thinking is "where did the brown color go". Milo is a pink color before it ages. Over time it will become a real deep brown.

Finale shape with some lite sanding done to it.

Off the lathe with a coat of ceder treat

A shot from the side. Once I start turning and I see I can't get it below the 6" diameter with out losing all of the color, I'll go ahead and finish it but fined you a smaller piece because we are actually wanting a 5 to 6 inch bowl

A look at the insides. no sanding has been done.

Need to turn it around and turn the foot off. The wood was actually pretty dry but still needs to set a couple off weeks before I do any more to it.

The ceder treat disburses the moisture evenly in the wood to help stop it from cracking and warping

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Winged VESSEL 

   December 14, 2012      OK here's another attempt at making something a little different.  I'm using Cook Pine and the piece that I have was cut about 2 weeks ago, so it's still real wet. It's 14 inches in diameter and 24 inches long. It should be kind of fun. 

Start by getting the bark off and truing it up

Starting to make the shape.

Need to get to the bottom which is 21 1/2 inches away

Saws All works great for this.

Pretty close to the shape. There was a bunch of sanding going on here

True up the ends and make a tenon that you can grab with your chuck.

Steady rest in place, getting ready for the inside work.

There it is all laid out and ready to cut.

Top view after the cuts.

I'm sure glad this part is done. Next comes a little more sanding and then it will be colorized with dye and then about 15 coats of lacquer.

Sanding is done for now. I added 3 colors of stain. Once this drys I'll sand it out so thing will blend together. That's the plan anyway

Beaded Platter

    I just started this project this morning  Dec. 3, 2012. I haven't decided on the finial design yet, but when I do you will see it here. 

I'll be using Mango for this project.

Ready to turn it into a platter.

I have a stepper motor on my lathe that hooks up to my laptop to do the indexing.

Now the platter has been divided into 144 segments. 32 sets of beads X 144 segments = 4608 individual beads.

Burning is completed. Now it goes back on the lathe for sanding on the front and finish turning the back. Stay tuned for more.

I lay out the pattern with a . 05 mm Tul permanent maker in the color that will be used on the beads.

Turned round and mounted to a chuck.

Then come the beads, there are 32 rows of 1/8 inch beads

The pencil lines up center of lathe, Then i make horizontal lines from the center out.

Then it time to start burning, each bead is burnt one at a time. this part takes about 2 1/2 hours.

All cleaned up. Now It's time to come up with the design that goes on it.

Then it's time to start filling them in. I like to use the Copic Ciao with a brush tip.

Well there it is. There is about 6 or 7 hours of coloring on this piece. I still need to apply about 5 coats of UV resistant clear coat.