OPPS! Hollow vessel -- almost.

[loyd]

Look closely -- the 6 inch vase is flawed.

Sometimes it's not cool to go too far with making the wall of a turning too thin. I actually didn't break through doing the turning; it happened while sanding. The waffle edge on the sanding disk caught the top rim of the turning and one of the waffle points bent up and tore the hole when it hit. I taught my sanding disk a few new words and decided I'd finish it anyway. My alternative design shelf will enjoy the company. But I still needed a vase so i used my last piece of red maple and made a second one. The first is 6 inches high x 3 inch diameter. The second [below] is 7 inch tall x 3 inch diameter.

As usual the finish is Deft gloss lacquer and buffed with Beal system.

7 inch vase

By the way: you may notice that there is a significant amount of spalting on these pieces. In fact, the spalting had gone a bit too far and there were very punky areas noticeable on the end grain of the top and bottom. It's hard to feature that, but otherwise the vases were marginally ok [note the small OK used here].

[loyd]

That second vase came out with a finish that was a little cloudy and not at all what I was after for this kind of piece, so today I took it back out to the shop and washed the wax off, remounted it, and sanded it again -- this time all the way to 2000 grit wet. Then I used the buffer sequence again and made it better but if you look too close, you'll notice that it's still a bit cloudy [a photo won't tell you that so I'll forgo posting one]. Any suggestions?

[sid_matheny]

I'm no help as you get much better finishes than I can. Speaking of sanding, I saw a video using a product called Yorkshire Grit that is a paste abrasive. Their site says:

Yorkshire grit is an abrasive paste formulated to give a fine keyed surface to your turnings, prior to applying your finish of choice. It consists of pharmaceutical grade ingredients, including mineral oil, beeswax and ultra fine grinding powders. These are then carefully blended (without the use of solvents or other strong smelling and potentially harmful chemicals) to produce a creamy abrasive paste. Yorkshire Grit acts like ‘liquid sandpaper’, reducing the scratches left by the initial dry sanding* and eliminating the increasingly fine dust produced by traditional sanding at higher grits. On most woods sanding up to 240 grit is sufficient to start with our paste. The grinding powders we use are designed to break down to a finer mesh as they are used, while still maintaining a cutting edge, so as the friction reduces the mesh size of the grit it is effectively forming a finer abrasive. In comparison tests we believe the finish is at least equivalent to 1000 grit.

Here is a link to the video of Mike Waldt trying it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPe6cBtsJjs

And this is a link to there site:
http://yorkshire-grit.com/Product-Page/

 

[loyd]

That's sort of like using the automotive rubbing compounds only without the solvents.

[loyd]

A wise man once said: "Your time wasn't wasted if you learned something making a mistake!" Well, if he didn't say that he likely would have had he thought it. However, this afternoon, I fought my way through a knotty piece of maple cutoff to make a small hollow vessel. I did the famous 'just one more pass to clean up a few ridges within finger reach of the mouth' when it happened. That's 2 or the last 3 hollow vessels that I've gone just a bit too thin. Therefore I'm forced to admit that -- slow learner that I am -- I obviously wasted my time the first of the two since I didn't learn. Now the question is did I learn this time? Only time will tell.

[sid_matheny]

He who makes no mistakes does nothing!

[loyd]

[southpaw57]

He who makes no mistakes does nothing! Or, makes something he did not intend to make!!!

[loyd]

When my family as kids was at home, my older sisters kept us busy with crafty things. One of those was to make Halloween masks with paper mach`e. All they did was sit us smaller kids at the kitchen table with a bowl of water mixed with [I think] condensed milk and [maybe} a little flour. We used a stock of the Miami News newspaper cut into strips. I don't recall how we shaped the masks, but we had them for Halloween that year and then let the roaches have them before Mother found them and disposed of them and gave us a lecture about leaving them in our closet for the roaches.

If someone was to wonder where this is heading consider the need for a form on which to make the paper mach`e craft. Or, maybe not.

[loyd]

Did I learn???/ Obviously not!

I really can't believe I did this again. This one was more of that punky box elder. Very spalted and tearing out pretty bad, but I figured that I could clean it up just a little. Maybe next time I'll forget the 'one last touch' syndrome.

I feel a little like Manual Brown. A very nice man whose turning got better with each monthly meeting, but he never got past the urge to describe his latest error. He took the kidding he got with good humor by the way. A nicer fellow you never met. He passed on several years ago but we still talk kindly of him.