Top view
Another view
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This bowl is about four inches deep and 12 inches across at it’s widest point. It retains the natural edge as it appeared in nature.
I applied copper leaf along some of the edges as a contrast to the wood. I then applied a patina using sodium sulfide to age the copper.
I finished this cedar bowl with Salad Bowl finish from Woodcraft.
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This oak vase is 9 inches tall.
This turned bird house is made from scraps from my fireplace woodpile. I picked up an oak limb from my woodpile and stuck it on the lathe. This was hiding inside the firewood. The red bird is hand carved. The nesting material is coconut straw.
This small wood vase is made from spalted maple. It is six inches tall and four inches in diamater. The figure of this wood vase blended with the natural spalting is quite striking.
This lidded jewelry box is made from ceder. The jewelry box has two compartments and a lid. It is 8 inches tall. The bottom compartment is 4 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep. The top compartment is 3.5 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep. The lid fits into the top compartment and the top compartment fits into the bottom compartment. The ceder smell in this jewelry box is really nice. This would really be a nice valentine or birthday present for your best girl.
Tissue paper before patina
I turned this Greek urn from oak. I hand carved the two handles from the same oak and added them to the piece using CA glue and a small tenon. The whole piece was coated liberally with sanding sealer and allowed to dry. Over the next two days I applied two coats of black acrylic spray paint. About a week later I sanded the paint with 400 grit sand paper and cleaned it thoroughly. I then applied gilders size and laid down copper leaf covering 99% of the piece. I let the piece dry for about a week.
To start the patina process I sprayed the piece with a fine mist of water. Tissue paper was laid on randomly making sure it adhered to the dampened urn.
It’s science…
Next I dab on a solution of sodium sulfide, making sure to cover all of the dampened tissue paper. This was left to soak through the tissue and react with the copper for about 60 seconds. Using paper towels I remove the soaked tissue paper and dab the surface dry with fresh paper towels to remove any residual sodium sulfide and stop the chemical reaction.
The piece will be left to dry for at least 24 hours then the next step will be applied. My son Mitch hand painted the octopus on the urn. You can see more of his work at www.exoticwoodturning.com
Vase after the patina
This wood vase was my first attempt at combining round and oval design elements. The bottom two-thirds of the piece is round and the top is oval. The top rim is not only the natural bark of the tree it is also cut off center and oblong. This natural edge wood vase is quite unusual.
I believe the wood is maple. It is about 7 inches tall and 5 inches in diameter. The finish is Minwax® Wipe-On Poly high gloss.
First let me say this picture does not do this vessel justice. You have to see it to believe it. The wood is very hard and has spectacular translucent curls on one side. The color is tan with shades of gray swirling about. The figure is random with no particular direction. The fissures are filled with Inlace.
This Dragon’s Egg is 8 inches tall and 6 inches in diameter. The wall thickness is about 1/4 inch. This piece was very challenging and labor intense. It was made from the root ball of a Crepe Myrtle Bush. When I hauled this off the street and loaded it into my truck it was covered in dirt. It was just dug up. The soil was still wet. It was so big I couldn’t get my arms all the way around. It weighed a ton; just kidding, It was very heavy. It looked like crap. I don’t know what possessed me to drag this monstrosity home.
I hosed it down with a power nozzle to clear the dirt away. With the soil washed away it was even uglier. It looked like a deformed octopus. I cut all of the roots away from the main ball with my Poulan Pro 262 chain saw. That didn’t help the look of it, but still I thought, “what are you hiding in there?” I threw it under my work bench and forgot about it for about 9 months. When I rediscovered it I wondered if it was worth messing with.
Because it was a root ball it was not solid wood but many roots compressed into a semi ball. Between the edges of the compressed roots, fissures appeared. Not cracks but jagged fissures which ran all the way through the piece. After a severe trimming on my Rikon 18 inch band saw it still did not look like it was turnable. However, something inside that horrible, gnarled, reject of a piece of wood spoke to me. 
This bowl comes from Murphy NC. It is Oak from a tree my friend Luther Fowler had felled on his mountain top property. We visited last winter so I had to load up on Oak and Poplar which he had an abundance of.
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This is the most interesting piece of wood that came out of my worm infested Oak tree. The colors are most striking. The figure is random and very tight. The swirly ridges you see on this side of the piece were revealed just beneath the bark. The worm holes are discolored black. The piece is hollowed just enough for the votive glass to fit so it is deceptively heavy.
This was my first large bowl. It is made from spalted maple I retrieved from a parking lot off of I-4 in Orlando. The walls are thicker than they should have been and the top rim is not well defined.
This large cremation urn is made from Red Ceder that came from the west coast of Florida. I loved turning this piece because it smells so good. Oh yea, it’s easy to cut also. The one problem it has is a tendency to produce small checks (cracks) even though it is thoroughly dry. You can see them near the base if you look closely.
The Urn is 11 inches tall and about 7 inches wide. The lid starts at the first bead counting up from the bottom. It was dressed with Woodcraft 100% Pure Tung Oil. I applied three coats of Minwax® Helmsman® Spar Urethane and a top coat of Minwax® Wipe-On Poly high gloss, sanding between coats with 320 grit paper.
I have turned several pieces from Red Ceder as it is one of my favorite domestic wood species. I am not turning exotic wood much as it is pretty expensive and I have not started selling any of my work yet. It would be great to sell enough to support my habit.
This piece came from a tree taken down from a church parking lot from Orlando. My son and I were returning from a sales call when I spotted the tree crew from I-4. We took the next exit and swung into the parking lot. They were happy to give us what we could get into the back of my Jeep. This large block with the natural inclusion waited patiently in my shop until I was experienced enough and had a lathe big enough to turn it.
The spalting, color, figure and inclusion is very striking. This is the first piece I turned with a significant amount of “AIR” to be delt with. Turning air can be testy. I especially wanted to keep the tree bark in tact around the inclusion. This in itself was quite challenging. I used copious amounts of CA glue around the edges of the bark to help secure it in place during the turning process. Still, to my horror, a little around the bottom disintegrated. All in all I am quite pleased as are my critics.
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This piece is about nine inches in diamater, five inches tall with a two inch opening. It was cut from North Carolina Oak and turned while green. The wood was pretty wet and my wife said the wood shavings smelled like vomit. I disagreed. This was my first attempt at a hollow form with a small opening. I read one of David Elsworth’s books on hollow forms for instruction and inspiration. This piece was a lot of fun.
The finish is ZINSSER BULLS EYE Clear Shellac Sealer & Finish. I just love the yellow glow shellac gives to oak. I used three coats. As expected, the sides have moved slightly making the piece oval looking from the top. It’s really cool.
$50.00
My sister-in-law gave me some really hard white wood with very little grain. It was pretty dry, but when I cut the blank it developed small checks over night. I had been wanting to try something different and thought this piece would be a good candidate. It took me about two hours to shape and hollow it out. After I sanded it down to 400 grit sand paper I sealed it with S.W. sanding sealer. Next I put on two coats of red acrylic paint, sanding with 220 between coats. I then randomly applied streaks of black acrylic paint after the red dried. Two coats of spar poly followed. I let all this cure for about a week.
Now the fun part. I sized the top half with gilding size. When it set up, I applied copper leaf and Dutch Metal leaf (fool’s gold) in random spots covering about 90% of the acrylic paint. In random spots under parts of the metal leaf, I laid down small swaths of sewing tulle and nylon string. After the sizing dried, I pulled off the sewing tulle and nylon strings exposing more of the red and black acrylic paint in some really cool patterns. I repeated the process on the bottom half of the piece and let the whole thing set a couple of days.
To make the piece look old and weathered I followed a process I learned from David Marks. Using two different chemicals, chemical proof rubber gloves, tissue paper, cheese cloth, a spray water bottle and two small disposable paint brushes, I subjected the metal leaf to a chemical reaction. By the way, I hated chemistry class in school. But this was really cool. After the chemicals did their thing I very, very carefully dabbed the piece dry and set it aside for about a week. The final step was three coats of wipe on poly, sanding between coats with 320 grit paper.
This whole process was really, really time consuming. Was it worth it? Some of my critics love it and some hate it. No one seems to be neutral. What do you think? I love it! In the end, that’s all that matters. I will definitely be doing it again.
I sold this piece on June 4th at the Lenoir City Arts and Crafts Festival.
This lidded vessel was my first attempt at combining turning and carving. The wood type is maple; a hard, white, plain figured, wood of no character. I turned the outside shape relativly quickly and separated the lid from the bottom. Once the bottom and lid were hollowed I laid out the “petals” around the top using the stops on my lathe to space them properly.
Using my Dremel Jig Saw, I carefully cut along the outside of the petals. This was pretty hairy as the piece is round and my jig saw table is flat. It took a little finessing. Once the basic design was cut I used my carving tools, hand held Dremel, and a lot of hand sanding to refine the petals. I finished it with a coat of S.W. sanding sealer.
The copper leaf gilding and patina finish I used is described elsewhere on my site.
This wood bowl is made from two pieces of wood. The top is Steamed European Beech; the bottom is exotic wood from India. The band around the middle is 75% Lindsey Inlace mixed with 25% silver glitter.
I used Loctite® Professional Epoxy 5 MIN to secure the two pieces. I let them dry over night. I shaped and hollowed the bowl to completion. Using my diamond parting tool I cut a dovetail groove where the two pieces were joined. I mixed a sufficient amount of Inlace and filled the dovetail groove making sure it over flowed the groove. I wrapped the filled groove with Scotch-Blue™ Painter’s Tape so it would stay packed in the groove. I let it dry 24 hours. I put the bowl back on the lathe and removed the hardened extruding Inlace with a round nose scraper. I sanded the whole piece through 1500 grit sandpaper and put on three coats of Minwax® Helmsman® Spar Urethane and a top coat of Minwax® Wipe-On Poly high gloss.
This is one of my most favorite pieces. It’s about 10 inches tall. The walls are about 5/8 inch thick with the base being about an inch. This picture does not do it justice. This side of the raw wood had a branch growing out. You can see the pith and the growth rings, while the opposite side of the jar has no evidence of pith or growth rings. It is quite striking. To add to the character there are tiny worm holes on various sides of the jar.
I sanded this piece through 400 grit sandpaper then applied Woodcraft 100% Pure Tung Oil to bring out the color in the wood. I let this dry about a week. I applied three coats of Minwax® Helmsman® Spar Urethane and a top coat of Minwax® Wipe-On Poly high gloss, sanding between coats with 320 grit paper.
This Oak vessel is 10 inches tall and 10 inches in diameter. It is cut from my neighbor’s Live Oak tree. As soon as it was cut I blocked it to size and wrapped it very tightly with about 5 layers of that plastic stretch wrap to seal in the moister. After curing about 9 months, I removed the stretch wrap. The wood had a black looking mold or fungus on it. I sprayed it with Clorox bleach then washed it with a hose. After it dried I put it on the lathe and turned it.
The top rim, all the way around, is the natural bark. I was very careful to respect the bark. After hollowing down about two inches, leaving the wall ½ inch thick, I secured the bark with thin Cyanoacrylate glue (CA – super glue, crazy glue). I finished turning the piece maintaining about a ½ inch wall thickness down to the base which is about one inch thick. I sanded through 600 grit sand paper.
I applied Minwax® Wood Finish™ Early American oil stain and let it dry for a couple of days. To finish the piece I applied 4 coats of Minwax® Wipe-On Poly high gloss, sanding with 320 grit between coats.
I sold this piece at the Pellisippii Ballon Festival in the fall of 2010.
NFS
I made this cigar ashtray from white oak that I received from an arborist in the Tampa area. It is about seven inches in diamater and three inches deep. This wood is pretty plain, very little character. I left the bark in the small inclusion on the side and filled a small crack with a little topaz lace mixed with a silver glitter.
The center of the piece is also topax lace. The finish is spar poly – about four coats. This is one of my favorite pieces because it is so functional. When I sit down after a hard day at the lathe I want a dry martini and a cuban cigar. This ashtray reminds me of what my life should be about. Indulgance and instant, self gratification. If only.
We had a Red Spanish Oak in our back yard. It was about 14 inches in diameter at the base and not to tall or bushy. It was obviously diseased and had to come down before it infected my other oaks. I had a new chain saw and two strapping sons so I figured we could take that baby down. Well, to make a long, sad story short we felled that tree right down the backyard fence line. Our precision was almost perfect. However, I didn’t take into account one major branch. That branch obliterated my neighbors six ft. high stockade fence. The good news was, it only took out one six ft. long panel, which we replaced from Home Depot in record time. My neighbor was very understanding, thank goodness.
When I cut the trunk into blanks I was astounded at the worm damage. I was also struck by the discoloration of the wood around the worm holes. The grain was also corrupted and had little pattern. This tree produced some of the most characterized wood that I have ever encountered. I turned some of the blanks when they were still green. These are two of the first pieces that I turned from that tree. In all, that tree produced over two dozen bowls and vessels. I thought of it as my “Worm Hole Collection”. I gave most of them away to family and friends.