Woodturning Maple Vase With Glitter Purple

Hey everybody it's Jim from Sprague Woodturning. This week we're going to take this strange looking maple piece and combine it with some deep cast from Desire Epoxy to make a very unique looking vase. All doesn't go to plan and we've had to change things up along the way but in the end I think that it's going to really make a beautiful looking vase. So all I'm doing here is trimming this piece up so that we can get it into the casting bucket. Again using a brush brush in the drill just to clean off any of the nasty bits. Removing any bark, screwdrivers and picks and you name it. Anything you can use to get rid of that bark and clean that up so that you don't get any material floating in your resin it's best to do that. Like I said we're going to use the deep casting epoxy from Desire Epoxy. I'm really loving this new thin formula. If you haven't tried it you definitely should and again there is a link in the description for 10% off your next order. Just use code inlayjim at checkout. All right so I was going to use the aqua blue the glow in the dark and you know it's the next day. I started this video the day before and you know I just I'm not feeling it. So I think what we're going to use is some glitter purple and I'm going to mix this so it's translucent so we can see through it. So that's the way that my brain works. If you haven't been here before I rarely step to the lathe with a plan. I'm not going to lie that's just that's just the way I am. I like to wing it. I like to kind of figure things out as I go and I think that that may show in some of my mistakes. But anyway after I thought over a night I decided to change my mind. All right I must say that I was surprised to see that that piece was floating even with that big rock on it. So what I'm going to do is put this in the pressure pot for an hour that'll open it up and add more if it needs. I'm sure this level is going to drop off quite a bit. Anyway I won't bother filming that. I'll see you guys in 72 hours. Oh that's heavy. Well that was easy. Got some more cracking here. I hope that that it's just kind of on the surface and doesn't go in very deep. This is this resin pour started out at eight inches. Now as you can see it's dropped off quite a bit. You know certainly pushing the the resin past it's past what it's supposed to be doing. So anyway we'll see if this affects our design or not. Beautiful. Love that. Now I'm thinking that this is probably going to be the top of our vase. For those who thought that this was going to be the top of the Nope. So what I did here was I measured kind of between where the resin pour is, put it on the lathe, marked the other side that you see here so that it was running relatively true on the lathe, and then mounted it that way. So as you can see it's it's very violent when you're when you haven't got something that's you know rounded on the bandsaw which I typically like to do. Because of the way this is mounted though that was really tough to do. I probably could have taken it over on the bandsaw and flat spot it where the the very bottom of this piece is going to be and then flipped it onto that side and then rounded on the lathe and maybe next time that is what I would do. This pour was way too deep and it definitely thermal cracked. Again I'm trying to push myself and see what the resin can do and cannot do. I don't think that any resin when you would pour it this deeply would survive the curing process. So you know that's 100% on me. It does affect the design and once we get to there I'll tell you kind of how maybe I would do things differently in that regard as well. I should mention that we are using the Hercules here from Hunter Tool Systems to whittle this piece away. This piece was actually quite challenging because of the end grain in it. There's a lot of end grain in it probably more than you would probably see in a normal bowl. So you know it was tough to cut back. I did cut out a lot of the footage because I mean it's just kind of redundant but anyway pushing the resin this far didn't work. It rarely does and anyway it's something that you know like I said I'm still working on and I have visions in my head as to what I want to do with it. But sometimes my visions are maybe too ambitious for the materials that I work with. So as you've seen there when I shut the lathe off you can still see that we got a little ways to go here yet. And believe it or not still really at this point I'm not really I don't really know what I'm going to do for design. I just yeah seeing those cracks and you I was like yeah this is probably going to thermal crack on me. But I kind of had a plan for that and it didn't exactly go the way that I wanted it to go. And we'll see that in a little bit here. And also you know I want to remind people that you know if you enjoy seeing certain videos in regards to inlays or regards to resin roughing out how I cut burls there are playlists on my channel and it's all separated into those playlists. So please if you're looking for certain types of videos you'll find lots of them in the playlist on my channel. I also have another big announcement and for the first time ever a video on my channel has had a million views and that is the Banksia Pod Vase. And it really has only been up for probably a couple of months and it's got a million views. And you know I'm over the moon about that. That's kind of a real big milestone for me because I've never had anything kind of in that category. So for those of you who have watched that video thank you so much for doing so. I really appreciate it and hopefully we can get a few more that are in that category. Okay maybe this this vase here will be maybe a million view. We'll see. But anyway thank you so much for all you people that have supported my channel and watched my videos. I really do truly do appreciate it. So when I shut the lathe off I was looking at what's going to be the very top of the vase. And because this piece is on its side compared to when it was in the bucket it's got that natural flowing edge. And I said that looks great. I really like the look of that. So you know the the bucket made that detail for us. And you know again this is kind of the way my brain works sometimes. I really totally just wing it. And you know I really I really like that aspect of being a woodturner. You could certainly lay out plans and you know I want this this item to kind of look like this. But you know you have to have max flex when you're working on the lathe here. So anyway in order to deal with these cracks I just put on some clear plastic so we can pour some resin. And you know I wasn't even going to try and bother with trying to match this resin. I was really looking for a corresponding different resin that would pop. And it's a good idea when you put these pieces of plastic on there to throw the duct tape on there just to make sure that you don't have any resin leaks. This one did develop a little bit of a nothing that affect the design of it. All right I've got some pro series mixed up here with pure white. Once I get this in here we'll throw this in the vacuum chamber. I was hoping that we wouldn't have to use the vacuum chamber so soon again. But here we are. Regardless I think that you know if this works the way that I want it to work it should look pretty darn cool. All right I don't see any leaks. Let's get it in the vacuum chamber. I don't imagine you're going to be able to see much but we'll give it a shot. There is lots of air coming out of there. All right so I'm pulling about 25 inches of vacuum there. And I am just I'm shocked at how much air is coming out of this. That tells me there must be some pretty substantial cracks down inside of this. Anyway I'm going to leave this for about 10 minutes. You only got about an hour to work with this with the pro series. So after that we got to get it to the pressure pot. All right that's been 10 minutes. All right so that's it. I'm going to put this in the pressure pot. Hopefully that's going to fill up all of them cracks and any voids that are in there. And we'll be able to get this to its first coat of finish tomorrow. Hopefully. See you then. So this is the next day and of course it's a good practice to try and take all that plastic off that way it doesn't come around and hit your knuckles. You'll see on the bottom of the vase where the white resin had kind of leaked out a little bit. But there was enough of a reservoir there that it was fine. So I just had to clean up that tenon a little bit prior to mounting it in the chuck. Now my wife and I had a discussion about what color should be used in here. And here you can see the white and it just really blended in with the the purple. There was no there really wasn't a lot of contrast and I was really looking for contrast. And I mentioned to my wife I said you know I think I want to put red in there. And and you know what my wife is is really great with colors. And she said no no the the white should be fine. And you know and don't get me wrong it's not that I dislike the look of this. It's just not the look that I was going for. I wanted the colors to pop in there. I didn't want to essentially hide the cracks. I wanted to accentuate the cracks. Tiny little cracks here. So we're just using a little bit of the star bond. And you know you'll see I'll put it over the very top of this. And it will give you an idea as to really what the finished product is going to look like. And you know it's cool. I really like those pearl resins. You know this was glitter. But regardless I mean it it's beautiful. Don't get me wrong. I really like the look of this vase. I like the profile of this vase. So in the future what I'm going to do if I experience thermal cracking and I want a contrasting color. I'm actually going to groove out that crack much bigger. So that in the end it will give me the look that I was going for. I had this vision in my head. And don't get me wrong this this still may be that way because I haven't really tried it yet. But you know a light inside of this shining through showing those cracks but with different colors. Anyway appreciate your thoughts on that. In the end it's a beautiful piece. So before we can actually do any hollowing we need to first of all core out the center of this. And just using using pretty much everything I've got. Every extension that I've got to get down to the bottom of this vase. All right so you know this is the first time that I've ever used this tail stock extender for drilling. I've used it to hold bowls for coring but never for drilling. And it surprisingly actually feels pretty robust. Now this lathe is not exactly the best. You know for a lathe that's as expensive as this is this is an issue. I believe that this is probably starting to get wore out. And this is probably one of the reasons why there's so much movement in it. So anyway main thing is it's done down to the depth that we want. Time to move on to some hollowing. All right we're all set up for hollowing. Got my SteadyRest in. This is the one-way hollowing system, captive system. It's got a laser if you haven't been here before. It's all set up and ready to go. As you can see I haven't gotten around to changing the design of the SteadyRest. With the captive system here and the laser, the laser if you're new to my channel, the laser can hit on the SteadyRest at the top. So I just want to lengthen those sidebars and that way it doesn't interfere with the use of the laser. It wasn't really a huge factor here because this this vase you know I'm not gonna say it has straight walls but you know as far as hollow pieces are concerned this is easier to work on than say some of the other hollow forms that I've done in the past. So here's the laser you can see it on the top of the vase again if you haven't been here before. And you know it's just it's a simple system. You set the the laser to whatever thickness you want and basically when the laser slips off the side of the vase or you know elongates on the side of the vase then you know you've pretty much at the at the thickness that you that you want it. The only problem that I really find with this system is that there's some drag associated with the tool on the tool rest and the the captive system in the back. Sometimes you have to kind of fight with that. Maybe you could put down some sort of a slippery tape that may help with that. If you have one of these systems or something like this I would like to hear from you as to what you've done to try and alleviate that. But you know it's a good system. I really like like the majority of one-way products. They're fantastic products and there is very very few one-way accessories that you know I would not recommend. For this project I was able to use the straight pouring bar the whole time so that was great. It's got you know little to no flex in it. As you can see it's quite a robust piece of metal. The only thing that I had to do was change the angle on the cutter when it was necessary. And here you can see kind of the I'm starting to get closer to the wall thickness and you'll see that laser get really long on the side of the vase and then that way you know where that you're there. Now I typically will leave some mass in the base of my vases. There's a couple of reasons for that. It makes the vase more stable on whatever surface it's sitting on. That way you know if somebody happens to bump the table that it's not going to fall over. So that you know that's probably there's I guess that's really the only main reason why I leave them that thick. I don't I don't really I mean it'd be a shame to see a beautiful vase like this sitting on a table and then somebody bumps into the table and it falls over and rolls off the table and smashes on the floor. So that's that's kind of why I don't typically make the vase thin on the bottom. And I guess another reason for leaving it a little thick on the bottom too when you're hollowing is because hollowing can be quite violent and I'm worried about the the vase breaking off the base where it's held in the chuck. And that gives you a little bit of flexibility for design on the very bottom after you've hollowed. All right well I haven't really showed too much inside of here. You can see there's a little nub at the very bottom that should easily sand off. A little bit of tear out here. Again it's not a big deal should be able to sand that out. I believe that we are going to use a resin finish on this piece. So you know it's cut pretty clean. I'm pretty happy. All right on to sanding. Again nothing new here. A little extension for the drill. People have been asking me where I got this and you know I I'm pretty sure I got it at Lee Valley but I went looking on the Lee Valley website and I didn't see it. So maybe not. So I can't really tell you where I got it. It is I believe a 16 inch extension something like that. Anyway I ended up bending it here. I didn't I didn't show it and so now it's got a little vibration to it. So I got to straighten put it in the in the drill and try and straighten it out. But it actually works really really good and as long as you're not holding on to it I'm just kind of steadying it in my hand. It won't burn your hand either. So for the outside I was able just to switch to normal sanding with the three and a half inch double disc from sandpaper.ca and oh I just you know I really like that wavy edge on the top. Really really happy about that and we might see more of those in the future. So here I'm using Artcast and it is a one-to-one resin. So it's a little thicker. So you know there's a couple of ways around that. If it's a nice hot sunny day you just put the jugs out in the sun and that would certainly warm them up. You can take those jugs and submerge them in warm water just make sure it's below the cap and or you can pour a little cup of it and sink it into some hot water and that works great too. Just using the torch to burn off any bubbles. First coat. I mean I haven't done a whole lot of resin finishing but I have found that the first coat is usually the hardest to get done because the brush really likes to stick. This is the same brush that I used before but what I did was I took the arrows and I blew it out real good and I pulled on the bristles to make sure that there was no loose bristles afterwards. And this resin is nowhere near as thick as the quick cure that I used on the Bankseapod vase. So it actually worked out very well. All right so that is the first coat of probably at least two. It is really absorbing the epoxy. You know I'm going to let this rotate for probably a couple of hours and it should be set good enough that I can put it in the clean room overnight. Anyway we will see you guys tomorrow for the second coat. What do you think of this? All right so I've MacGyver together a little rotisserie here. This is just a small little motor I've been holding on to this thing for oh probably 20 years. I'm thinking that one day I would have a purpose for it and here it is. You know I've just roughly put this together. The problem is there's fans on this end and I don't want it blowing on to whatever we mount on the shaft here. So I've put a metal shield around it and unfortunately the fins come all the way the openings come all the way up to the top so that will be blowing onto the piece as well. So I just for now just put some duct tape over it just so the air can blow out. I don't know how hot this is going to get but it's a tenth of a horsepower. It's a little noisy. That's how fast the shaft spins so that should be good for a rotisserie for now. It isn't perfect. I'll make some improvements to it. Let's get our second coat on. All right so here's the piece. As you can see it's just full of bubbles. Totally expected that. What I did yesterday I didn't film it so I put a coat of finish on or a coat of the resin on and then I mean there was vast majority of it was being was being sucked in by this end grain here. So you know I just took my hand with a glove afterwards and went back over it while it was rotating and that actually filled it in even pretty good too. So like there's some dry spots right there but for the most part it's covered and finished so you know this is probably going to take three coats to do. So what I'm going to do is sand this 320 inside and out and then we will get our second coat on. All right so a couple things here I do find that the finishing is easier to do on the outside of the vase than it is on the inside and you know that even it's probably true for bowls as well. It's much easier to get an extra finish on the outside than it is on the inside. An option may be to wear a glove and then stick your hand down inside the vase with it rotating and you know very slowly pull your hand out. That will kind of level the finish off a bit. The torch actually warming the resin had it made it lay out flatter so that was good that way. You'll see when I switch to sanding the outside of this vase I don't think that the resin was fully set because it wasn't really coming off in a dust. It was kind of coming off it it wasn't like raw resin at all but you can see it's like coming off in like little balls or cigar shaped pieces. So I think that this probably needed to set for a little bit longer before I sanded this piece but you know I'm just always kind of crunch for time for these videos so that's kind of what I was up against. Regardless it sanded back fine as you can see and putting the next coat on was actually certainly a lot easier because now you've got a base coat of resin on there and it flows a lot better off of the brush. All right so we are going to be using the Artcast again from designer epoxy. I've also got a different brush today. I don't know if that's going to make a difference. Hopefully it does and what I've done is warmed up a little bit of water and submerged the Artcast in it to make it nice and runny which is what we want. So one of the drawbacks of this vase was the top. So when you go to stick your your hand inside of it sometimes just because of the the shape of it you'd want it to kind of rub on your hand. So you know if you're if you've got a normal top it certainly would be a lot easier to stick your your arm and your hand down inside of this vase while it was rotating. There was enough room for me to get my my arm in there. It was just every now and then if you were just off a little bit it would rub up against the the long side of the very top of the vase and it would kind of throw you off. And there's going to be some people that wonder what speed and feed rate that I'm putting this resin on. So I thought that I would put in a real-time clip here to give you an idea. One big difference between the the quick cure and the Artcast was the torch. Torching method didn't seem to do much for the quick cure as far as laying it out but it worked well for the Artcast. Looks so much better the second time around. Hardly any bubbles at all but you can see a few forming there. All right let's get doing on the rotisserie. Okay folks it is Thursday afternoon and I still got editing to do and uploading to do so I'm gonna have to call it there. This is what it looks like after its second coat. And what I will do is I will put the third coat on today and I will show that as the rotating picture at the end like I usually do. I'd also like to try and maybe light it from above to kind of make the whole thing glow as well to give you an idea what it looks like. But what I will do is I will hold on to this till next week and I will show it completed. Hopefully it'll be completed by then and I'll put the photos on Facebook and Instagram as well. If you're curious the piece ended up being nine and a half tall and six inches in diameter at its thickest diameter. Up there on the the skill level it's a long way off of the chuck so you know you're dealing with some vibration. I wouldn't even think about trying to do something like this unless I had a steady rest like I do so keep that in mind. I'm relatively happy with the outside of this except for the bubbles. The key to doing these resin finishes is not to break through to the wood and I did that yesterday in some of the areas here. So you know I've got some bubbles so it needs to be done. But as far as flatness is concerned way a lot better than the quick cure for sure. This was on the rotisserie for probably two hours yesterday and I noticed this morning that there's a little sag in there so I guess I'll have to leave it on the rotisserie for three hours today. I really like in the glitter purple. There's a look of what it looks like on the inside. It almost gives you a bluish tinge to it which is kind of neat and I absolutely love this detail from the casting bucket. I will 100% use that in the future. I really really groove in that detail and I really like that detail right there as well. Things all do differently. Like I said in the video where these cracks are I'm going to groove them out and put in a really high contrasting different color and then that way when you're looking at this piece it should really create a lot of visual interest. Somebody sees it from I was really kind of going for a stained glass look and while this certainly adds a lot of intrigue to the piece in a way it kind of looks like a repair if you follow. Regardless I love it. I absolutely think it's a fantastic piece and once the finish is done on it I mean it's going to be really really nice. Alright so I would do that differently. I'm having a real hard time with trying to get the resin nice and flat and smooth on the inside of these pieces. It's not an easy thing to do. If this was a wider opening it certainly would be a lot easier and yeah I can get my arm in there but still it's when you're when you're coming out and this thing's rotating and wants to hit your hand and it kind of throws everything off. So you know you experienced resin coating people give me your thoughts on that or anybody everybody can give their thoughts on it but I really really like shiny finishes and when this is all said and done this will be a very very durable finish and will last for all time or close to it. Alright well that's it let me know in the next week's video and again that's where we're going to get the next winner of the 50,000 subscriber giveaway bowl. We're going to pick from the comments so please leave a comment down below and if you need any stuff that you've seen in the videos there's all kinds of links in the description down below to pretty much all the products that I use in my workshop including our sponsors. So head on down there if you need some stuff from our sponsors put some money back in your pocket. Next week is going to be a burl and resin combo again and I will show this finished piece at the end of next week's video as well hopefully hopefully it's going to be finished but it should be. So I guess that's it till the next one take care stay safe don't forget that bell and please share with your friends see you next week