wood | Don's Blog

Beech Tree 2019

Recording progress on a large wind-fall Beech tree a neighbour has kindly let me have.

Most of this will be chopped up for firewood for next winter, but hopefully some of it will become bowls, planks, spoons, stools or other stuff over the next year – plan is to update this post with progress as that happens…

Some pics of the early stages and first few cuts:

This attempt at a panoramic pic shows the size of the tree better, pity I cut off the top of the photo though 🙁

Most of the first day was spent clearing the branches and chopping off the small bits in preparation to get at the multiple trunk sections next time.

And some shots of the first few tractor loads brought home and added to the woodpile – still nice and green….

Wooden boards

A few pics of some roughly milled Ash planks a friend gave us, which I planed/thicknessed and cut to length & height to create kitchen kick-boards.

Followed by a few pics of a chopping board I finished off at the same time.

The planks had been sitting around the yard for quite a while… here they are after a quick initial run through the planer:

Close up after sanding and applying a load of Danish oil:

Drying in the sun:

The boards are in place now and I’ll add some pics if the kitchen is ever clean enough 🙂

Some close up pics of a couple of chopping board made from a sleeper another friend gave me about 5 years ago – he’d had it for yonks so it must be pretty old wood. I left them extra chunky so when they get too scored and cut I can resurface them several times:

Beech House

Some pics of a (mostly) beech bird feeding house I made a while back – the first pic shows one of many visits from the local Woodpeckers captured on my CCTV camera.

young woodpecker

Spalted Beech bowl – green woodturning

The weather’s finally warm enough for me to do some woodturning again.

I’ve been wanting to make some more “green” Beech bowls from the trees I chopped up early last year. Here are pics of the process.

chainsawed a “50p” shaped bowl blank from a slab of wood that’s been sitting in the shed:

quickly and easily made round – green wood cuts very easily, and smells good too!

spinning at about 2,000 rpm:really nice spalting all the way through: some homemade beeswax and oil applied, with help from a bit of heat: inside done too… and the underneath finished in the reversing jaws: all done – will try and let it finish drying out slowly to avoid serious cracking, but it’s bound to warp a fair bit…

Recent woodturnings

Some pics of wooden things I’ve made recently…

Little pot with scorched edges:

Small oak bowl:

Deep Ash (I think? maybe Beech?) bowl with cool grain and spalting:

My first attempt at Pyrography, on a little Celtic vase sort of thing:

Hand turned natural-edge wooden bowls

Some pics of my first attempts at turning “natural edge” wooden bowls

These were made from a very nice chunk of Rowan wood I was kindly given a while back

Woodturning – ginormous Sycamore bowl

Last night I finished turning this large bowl from an even larger chunk of sycamore supplied by Home of Wood.

Here’s the finished beastie:

The blank I started off with was so large I had to swivel the head of my lathe sideways to get it turning. Once it was roughed and made round, I was just able to rotate it back over the bed of the lathe – there was no room to spare.

I kept as much of the width as I could, so the finished bowl is very nearly 12″ in diameter at its widest point.

Here are some pics of it mounted on the chuck & on the lathe.

I used several thin coats of Wood Wax 22 for the finish on this one, which is a mix of beeswax and carnauba wax. It’s easy to apply and when you apply a little friction on the lathe (to generate some heat) it really brings out the grain and details of the sycamore.

After the ’22 was done I then applied a thin layer of Liberon Wax to seal it and provide a deep gloss finish, which should be reasonably hard-wearing.

Not sure the pics illustrate quite how large this bowl is, but it’s really pretty mahoosive!

Much like the Woodturning – New Ash bowl I turned and posted about recently, there are some nice contrasts on the underside of this one.

I’m aware that if I’d gone a bit deeper/thinner on the inside this colour would have started to show through there too, which may have worked well, but I didn’t want to risk making it too thin. Or risk meeting the jaws of the chuck with the tip of my bowl gouge…

It covers a 12″ vinyl album pretty nicely 🙂

Woodturning – New Ash bowl

Ordered some new woodturning blanks from Home of Wood recently. Very pleased with what they sent – sizes and variety all exactly what I was after.

Here are some pics of the first one I’ve finished turning, an Ash bowl with some nice grain and range of colour, finished off with my homemade beeswax and oil mix: