Norfolk Island Pine Vase

Vaughn McMillan

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This vase is a piece of Norfolk Island Pine I picked up at a club meeting, turned wet to about 1/16" to 3/32" thick and left to warp as it wanted. The bottom inch or so of the walls is a bit thicker, about 1/4" or so, since the bottom itself was already pretty thin (about 1/8") and didn't want to blow it up. It's 9" tall and between 6 1/4" and 7" across the top, depending on where you measure. The finish is multiple flood coats of Lee Valley polymerized tung oil thinned 50-50 with mineral spirits. (The Lee Valley stuff is already 50% mineral spirits, so the mix ended up being 25% tung oil and 75% mineral spirits.) I let each coat soak in for a few minutes, then wiped it off with a cotton rag. After the tung oil cured for a few days, it was buffed with PL compound and and waxed with Renaissance Wax. The wood came out nice and translucent (except for the thicker part at the bottom), and the oil seemed to bring out a fair amount of chatoyance.
Click on the pics to see a bigger view...













Comments, critiques, suggestions, and questions are all welcome.
 
Nice one amigo! I made it to your place. Looks nice - hopefully, you all can nurse me along in my meager strivings to turn nice hollow forms.:)

This wood is relatively new to me and I think it's very beautiful with all the colors. I've seen some pieces a guy had soaked for 100's of hours in danish oil...very translucent.
 
Great craftsmanship Vaughn, but the form doesn't work for me. Too unstable looking for my little rectilinear mind. I like how thin and translucent it is.
 
I could definitely see somebody paying big bucks for it to hold some sort of dried fall flower arrangement.

I really like the knots. Did you have any trouble keeping them in? I guess is the wood was fresh they would have been pretty solid?
 
Thanks for the comments, guys. I like this one in person better than in photos. The light weight when you pick it up is very surprising.

...I really like the knots. Did you have any trouble keeping them in? I guess is the wood was fresh they would have been pretty solid?

Once it got real thin and flexible, I had a couple of the knots come out as I started sanding with my little 2" ROS. I glued them back in with CA then did all the rest of the sanding by hand, with the lathe turned off. This wood shows scratches very easily, so sanding was a pain. I sanded to 600 grit, and also wet-sanded with 600 grit as I was flooding it with finish. Of course the first coat of finish showed scratches I'd missed, so I went back to 120 grit and worked my way back up to 600 before applying more finish. I turned the piece in a three hours or so, then spent probably at least twice that time sanding, even though there were no deep tool marks or anything else requiring heavy use of the 80 grit gouge.
 
Dan and Bernie, I was lucky and got this piece for $20 off the back of a truck at a turning club meeting. I would have liked for the knots to be closer to the center of the blank so I'd have more design possibilities to work with (I'm not all that thrilled about the form I ended up with), but for the price, I couldn't pass it up.
 
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