Red Cedar Pedestal Bowl

Dave Hoskins

Member
Messages
5,252
Location
Parker County, Texas
This is one of my most recent turnings. As you might be able to tell, I lean a bit more towards rustic and natural turnings. So, I go through great effort sometimes to maintain that look. This bowl is 11" in diameter, 4 1/4" in height, and has a vessel depth of 2 1/2". The wood was sealed with walnut oil and then finished with a walnut oil/shellac mixture.
 
Hi Jim! Yeah. Red Cedar is some pretty soft stuff. Sanding this wood I only power sand for the 80 and maybe the 120 grit. The rest I hand sand while spinning. I do pretty much all my sanding with the piece is spinning. With something this soft I usually don't exceed 950 or 1000 rpm's. Most of my paper I use is automotive paper. I always have better results using it. Plus if you do have the occasion to wet sand, the auto paper works a lot better.
 
Dave,
Great design, can I steal it for some of my bowls? I have about half a red cedar tree laying out back for me to work on... my tree was very old and I'm finding voids where some of the wood is rotted... still makes for some interesting bowls.... I have not thought of using walnut oil on my cedar bowls... I like the looks of the finish. I've used poly on them and really don't like the look, so will try the walnut oil. Sometimes on smaller pieces that aren't bowls, I'll just buff the outside with a carnuba... shines up pretty good.

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This is an urn that I did from cedar it's just buffed with carnuba. (according to wikipedia what I have that is called cedar is actually a juniper...we do have cedars here and I have a couple on the back of my lot, but not big enough to do much with. My big trees stand about 50 feet tall and have bare trunks for about 30+ then branches with needles rather than the feathery fronds that I remember as cedars. My dad liked cedars for fence posts and we usually had a cedar as our Christmas tree.)
I've had to remake the lid though, someone dropped it at my last show and chipped the original lid.... this is the original before the piece went to the show.
 
Nice work, Dave. :thumb: Cedar is difficult wood to get a good smooth surface on. In my experience, you'll get better sanding results (with all types of wood) by slowing your lathe down even more. Even at 800 to 1000 rpm, sanding creates a lot of heat and that heat can "temper" the wood, making it harder to sand out the tool marks (and the scratches from the coarser grit sandpaper).
 
Chuck, steal away! Have fun. If somebody wants to copy me, I feel complimented. Red Cedar needles tend to have a slight blue tint to them. Whereas Juniper is just plain green. And juniper is also called mountain cedar. It's a nice wood to work with as well. That's what we have around here for the most part. Walnut oil is what I always seal my bowls, platters, and spice boxes and such with. I polish with my walnut oil/shellac mixture. Works well but with cedar you have to put 2-3 coats of oil as it soaks in so much. Vaughn, you are right that it is hard to get a real smooth surface on. I rarely go to higher speeds on the lathe as I find no benefit to it. Except if for some unfortunate reason the piece comes off the lathe, it hits you harder. If you call that a benefit. Thanks for the comments, everybody!
 
Chuck, steal away! Have fun. If somebody wants to copy me, I feel complimented. Red Cedar needles tend to have a slight blue tint to them. Whereas Juniper is just plain green. And juniper is also called mountain cedar. It's a nice wood to work with as well. That's what we have around here for the most part. Walnut oil is what I always seal my bowls, platters, and spice boxes and such with. I polish with my walnut oil/shellac mixture. Works well but with cedar you have to put 2-3 coats of oil as it soaks in so much. Vaughn, you are right that it is hard to get a real smooth surface on. I rarely go to higher speeds on the lathe as I find no benefit to it. Except if for some unfortunate reason the piece comes off the lathe, it hits you harder. If you call that a benefit. Thanks for the comments, everybody!

Dave,
Even if a bowls comes off at 450 (lowest speed on my lathe) it smacks you pretty good... somewhere on this forum is a picture of my face where a bowl came out of a longworth chuck and bounced off my cheek... it wasn't pretty and hurt like h***...
 
Hi Chuck! Oh, yeah. I agree with you. I wasn't trying to minimize the danger or possibility. It will definitely hurt if you are in the line of fire and can do some damage. I am lucky. The worst case I have of wood coming off was a piece of bodark that came apart and managed to chew my left forearm up. Missed my head luckily. I saw it, or felt it coming apart and the next thing I know I was on the deck and had already hit the kill switch on the lathe. We can never be safe enough, for sure.
 
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