iDRY Vacuum Kilns

Sponsors:

Deadheader's Sunken Cypress

Started by CHARLIE, August 02, 2004, 12:44:22 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

CHARLIE

During the Winter of 2004, the UPS truck dropped off a rather large, oddly packed package.  I was quite puzzled because it came from Vero Beach, Florida.  

I opened the box and inside, wrapped in a plastic garbage bag was a nice sized, wet chunk of wood.  Not knowing what it was or whom it was from, my friends that live in Vero Beach are not woodworkers, I called my Uncle in Fort Pierce and asked him if he sent it. He said no.  So, I set the wood aside to slowly dry.  I did not have the time to do anything with it at that moment anyway.  

After sitting in my garage for a while in the plastic bag, I removed it from the bag and put it in my shop to complete the drying process.  I still had no idea from whence this chunk of wood came.  One evening, I was signed onto the forum when I got a note from one of the members asking if I had received the wood he had mailed me. Aha! The mystery was solved.  Fla_Deadheader had mailed it to me.  

Fla_Deadheader has a business raising sunken logs from Florida rivers and sawing them into boards to sell. Out of the goodness of his heart, he sent me a chunk of cypress he had pulled up from a depth of about 20 feet out of the Oklawaha River just so I could experiment with it.  It's difficult to know how long that cypress had been under water but I do know there was active logging on the Oklawaha River from about the 1860s to the late 1890s. As I had a lot of other turnings I had to do, I just let the wood sit until I could get to it. Plus, it had to dry.  Here it was July already and I finally had time to see what was inside that wormy, encrusted piece of wood.

Here are pictures of both sides of the sunken cypress.



The first thing I needed to figure out was what size bowl or bowls I could get out of this chunk of sunken cypress.  I wanted as large a bowl as I could get for Fla_Deadheader and then a smaller bowl for myself.  Any scraps I'll use to turn smaller items like bottle stoppers, lamp/fan pulls and ornaments.  I put my disk templates on the cypress and determined I could rough cut a 10" bowl blank.


Then off to my bandsaw I went. I use the disk as a guide. This is where I ran into my first challenge.  There must have been stress inside the wood because the kerf kept closing on the bandsaw blade and pinching it. This brings the blade to an abrupt stop and the only way to free the blade is to open up the kerf. I did this by pounding a screwdriver into the kerf as close to the blade as I could.  I was to the point of wondering if I was ever going to make it through the wood, because the blade kept getting pinched.  But with persistence, I prevailed.



I then found the approximate centers on each side of my bowl blank and mounted it on my wood lathe between the drive center and the tail center.  I ran the lathe at the lowest possible speed and proceeded to true up the bowl blank.  As you can see from the shape, it was quite a bit out of balance and my lathe was dancing and vibrating.  What surprised me was that even after I took off enough wood to true up the bowl blank, it still was out of balance causing my lathe to shimmy.  I could not figure out why this was happening.



Even though the bowl blank was still out of balance, I rough shaped the exterior of the bowl and turned a tenon on its bottom side.  That would be the side of the bowl blank by the tail center, which is to your right in the preceding pictures.  I then, removed the bowl blank from the lathe, removed the drive center and installed my Oneway 4 jaw chuck. I remounted the bowl blank by placing the tenon into the chuck and tightening it down.


I continued to turn the bowl blank at the lathes slowest speed and refined the outside shape of the bowl. At this point, the 10 inch diameter blank has been reduced to about a 9 inch diameter.  This chunk of wood was still causing my lathe to shimmy and I still had not a clue as to why.  Once, I stopped the lathe to check my work and noticed the wood was beginning to crack on the darker side of the bowl blank. Yep, the bowl blank had dark wood on one side and light wood on the other. I grabbed my CA glue and stabilized the cracks.  I sure was glad I caught that in time.  Now I began hollowing out the inside of the bowl.  The more wood I removed, the less the lathe shimmied, but I never did get it to rotate smoothly.



Now this was the fun part. I just love it when the shavings are peeling out of the wood in long ribbons.  You might think all the shavings would be falling down, but that is not the case. Long thin ribbons of wood flew up and onto my tool rack and my lamp and even all over me.


Now that the bowl was hollowed out, I began sanding. My sandpaper was gumming up as if I was sanding varnish.  So I stopped the lathe to figure out what was going on.  The light bulb came on!  The dark wood side of the bowl was full of resin and the light wood side of the bowl was not.  So that is what caused it to be out of balance.  The resin side was heavier.  I just changed sandpaper a lot more frequently and sanded the bowl down to 600 grit before applying 3 coats of Woodturner's Finish, which is shellac based.


I removed the bowl from the chuck so I could finish turning the bottom of the bowl.  I used a method I learned from Alan Lacer.  In fact, the tool I inserted into the headstock was made by him.  As you can see, the bowl is pinched between the circular disk on the headstock side and the tail center.  I then reduced the tenon to about ½ inch diameter and recessed the bottom of the bowl so it would sit flatly on a table.


      
I removed the bowl from the lathe, chiseled off the ½ inch diameter tenon and sanded the recess down to 600 grit.  I then burned my signature, date, type of wood and from where it came on the bottom before applying three coats of  Woodturner's Finish.  Here are two views of the finished bowl.




Charles M. Cadenhead
Dover, Minnesota
Charlie
"Everybody was gone when I arrived but I decided to stick around until I could figure out why I was there !"

Fla._Deadheader

 Boy am I embarrassed. I was gonna post pics of that bowl many times. Just didn't have enough round-tuits left to work with. ::)

  The pics do not do that bowl justice. It is absitively gorgeous. Only thing is, it has warped a bit and now it does rock. ::) That's OK, it gives it "Character". Charlie also sent a card with all the info about the wood and about his workshop. THANKS, Charlie.
All truth passes through three stages:
   First, it is ridiculed;
   Second, it is violently opposed; and
   Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

iain

cracking bowl and very nice bit of ankle ;)

iain

ps what time zone you in charlie?

Jeff

Hes one over from me.

Nice job there bowl boy! ;)
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

WV_hillbilly

  An awesome bowl there Charlie .

That CA glue is great at save pieces when things are going wrong eh . I  use it to make Deer antler solid when turning it  and you get into the center where it is porous ..
Hillbilly

OneWithWood

One With Wood
LT40HDG25, Woodmizer DH4000 Kiln

sandmar

I'll bite.........what is CA glue and where do you get it?

Sandmar....AKA GA dummy ;D

rebocardo


Buzz-sawyer

Charlie you wood looked a lot like a cypress knee....If not I wonder how they would show grain ...probably like a burl.........
    HEAR THAT BLADE SING!

etat

I wanna know more about that there glue too!
Old Age and Treachery will outperform Youth and Inexperence. The thing is, getting older is starting to be painful.

WV_hillbilly

  CA glue stands for Cyanoacrylate Adhesive .  Just a fancy name for super glue .  The  kind I buy is from a company named Satellite City . I buy it from Woodcraft  woodworking store . There are 3 different viscosities of it . The  thickness I use is " Super T " is a medium viscosity and sets up in about 30 seconds  . The thin stuff is like water and sets up in about 15 seconds . They make a thicker  viscosity that is like gel  and sets up in about 1 minute .

A couple of pointers when using CA glue . Don't hold your fingers together or on something  very long  or they may be that way for a bit Until you get the solvent on it .  Make sure that what you are gluing doesn't  have runout onto something you didn't intend on gluing it to .I have had to chisel pen blanks off of my work bench before  a few times. I have had pen blanks stuck to each other  and have to cut them apart .

 The worst thing I have stuck a pen blank to was the mandrel that I use to mount them on the lathe with . ( I was trying to stop a blank from cracking apart . ) Now I  take  them off the mandrel before I apply the glue.  

So be carefull or it could be a sticky situation in a hurry . Hope this helps you out .

Hillbilly
Hillbilly

sandmar

Thanks for the info hillbilly... we GA boys be learning all the time ;D
Sandmar

Kevin

Very nice Charlie!

Here's some peckywood that someone already removed the bowl from...


CHARLIE

Thanks for the compliments.  :)   It was fun turning the wood because I had never turned something that had been under water for such a long time.

Iain, I'm in the Central Time Zone (CST) and lived in Minnesota. I just recently moved (or am in the process of moving to Wisconsin.  That's why I haven't been on the forum much lately.

WV_Hillbilly, thanks for explaining the CA glue for me. I purchase my CA glue from Woodcraft, Packard or a company called Starbond.  Starbond is the best deal. The stuff is expensive but sure is handy. The thin glue is like water, so when you see a hairline crack appearing, you can apply the thin stuff and it goes down into the crack and stabalizes it.  Hillbilly, I did the same thing once. I was using a wooden mandrel to turn my birdhouse ornaments and saw a crack appear. I applied thin CA glue and finished turning only to find that I had glued my turning to the mandrel. :-/  I basically only use the thin and the medium CA glues.

Buzz Sawyer, now that you mentioned it, it looks sort of like a cypress knee. But I really don't know.  I just know it was a chunk of sunken cypress.

Fla_Deadheader, sorry it warped a bit.  I thought it had dried enough. I reckon I should have rough turned it and let it sit for about 3 months, but I didn't.  Heck, I figured it would have been dry.  I just hope y'all enjoy having it, especially since it is from the wood you rescue from the river.

 

  
Charlie
"Everybody was gone when I arrived but I decided to stick around until I could figure out why I was there !"

Fla._Deadheader

  Charlie, ya gotta remember, we use the A/C from April till November down here. Did ya forget that ??? :D :D :D

  I'm sure that's why it dried a little more. Does NOT matter. We is very proud of that there bowl. 8) 8) ;D

  I got a couple of knees for the "Teech" to carve on. Someday, I will get up to his place and get the Vacuum pumps we bought. I will deliver the knees to him then.
All truth passes through three stages:
   First, it is ridiculed;
   Second, it is violently opposed; and
   Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

WV_hillbilly

 Charlie

  Did you know that they make an accellerator spray for CA glue .  I use it too. Cause when you  have the pieces exactly where you want them  spay a little  accelerator on and it instantly sets up . No more waiting  for the glue to set .
Hillbilly

CHARLIE

WV_Hillbilly, I also use the accelerator. It's handy. One thing to be careful about though when using the medium or thick CA glue. If you have a lot of glue and spray it with accelerator, it'll turn white and that is hard to get rid of. When I have to use it to fill, I usually let it cure by itself.
Charlie
"Everybody was gone when I arrived but I decided to stick around until I could figure out why I was there !"

WV_hillbilly

  Charlie  

 I have found out about the white stuff the hard way .  :D  I thought alot had to be used but found out different . It is good stuff to use and I like it .
Hillbilly

sawwood


 Nice looking bowl there Charle. I have turned some green
 wood and have had no luck, it crackes to much. I have
 turned it over size and then put in a platic bag with news
 paper to help dry it. Stil when i think is all most dry i try
 to finish it, no luck. What do you do to keep your wood
 from doing this? I have used the ca glue too on my
 segmented turnings with the sanding dust to fill small
 place. Works good with the med ca and i have also had
 the white stuff,

 Sawwood
Norwood M4 manual mill, Solar Kiln, Woodmaster
18" planer/molder

CHARLIE

Sawwood, I wouldn't put the bowls in a plastic bag because the moisture can't escape.  I turn my greenwood bowls to about 3/4" thick and put in two paper grocery sacks. If those sacks get too moist, take it out and put it in fresh sacks.

One way you can tell it's ready to turn is to weigh it when you start. Then weigh it once a week.  When it quits losing weight, then it should be safe to turn.

I also have had good luck soaking greenwood rough turned bowls in a detergent solution. I can finish turning them faster without cracking but the wood will still move.
Charlie
"Everybody was gone when I arrived but I decided to stick around until I could figure out why I was there !"

Quartlow

Charlie, that is one beutiful bowl!!!

Breezewood 24 inch mill
Have a wooderful day!!

CHARLIE

Geeez, I had fun re-reading this thread I started almost 2 years ago.  It brought back some good memories about receiving the wood "out of the blue" and turning it into a bowl. :)
Charlie
"Everybody was gone when I arrived but I decided to stick around until I could figure out why I was there !"

Fla._Deadheader


I re-tell the story once in a while, myself, Charlie.  ;)  Thanks again  8)
All truth passes through three stages:
   First, it is ridiculed;
   Second, it is violently opposed; and
   Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

Burlkraft

Well......is that it????? How's the bowl doing??? Charlie, what did you make out of the rest of it???
Do any of you turners on this forum have any clothes that don't have CA glue or accelerator stains on them??? I have CA glue on clothes that have never been near the lathe :o :o :o :o

How does that happen ??? ??? ???
Why not just 1 pain free day?

Thank You Sponsors!