Bowl, couple of pens and some stoppers

Chuck Rodekohr

In Memorium
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495
Location
NorCal, USA
The shallow bowl is figured Maple, 9 ¼” wide, 1 5/8” tall, walls are ¼” and the base is 3/8” thick. Sanded to 600 grit, rubbed on Boiled Linseed Oil, Beall Buffed with Tripoli, White Diamond Compound and Carnauba Wax.

The two pens are Argentinan Lignum Vitae. The first is a Euro Style Black Titanium, and the second pen is a Wall Street II, Titanium Gold. Both were sanded to 600 grit, 2 coats of Mylands Cellulose Sanding Sealer sanded with 600 between coats, finished with three coats of Mylands High Build Friction Polish, sanded with 600 between coats, then the first was buffed with carnauba wax and the second got the Beall triple buffing treatment. The pens are going to be gifts to some friends that gave me a 2” X 2” X 12” stick of Lignum Vitae and the pens were made from that.

The first stopper is turned from Bocote, sanded to 600, wet sanded with BLO and 600 grit. Beall Buffed with Tripoli, White Diamond Compound and Carnauba Wax.

The second stopper is Mahogany, sanded to 600 grit, Beall Buffed with Tripoli, White Diamond Compound and Carnauba Wax

The third stopper is also Mahogany, sanded to 600 grit, 2 coats of Mylands Cellulose Sanding Sealer sanded with 600 between coats, finished with three coats of Mylands High Build Friction Polish, sanded with 600 between coats, then Beall Buffed with Tripoli, White Diamond Compound and Carnauba Wax.

All the stoppers are mounted on Ruth Niles #301 Stainless. These are my first attempts at stoppers. I think they are a little bulky. I’ll have to work on trimming them down a bit. I am experimenting with different finishes.
 

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Good stuff, Chuck. :clap: Nice work all the way around.

I did a lignum vitae pen once and used the resins in the wood as the finish. I sanded to 600, then cranked the lathe all the way up and used a paper towel to burnish the wood. As it got hot from the friction (borderline smoking hot), the resins started seeping out of the wood, coating it. Then I worked through the Micro Mesh grits to even it out and put a high shine on it. It's cool wood to work with.
 
Chuck,

Nice work:clap: The grain on the Becote stopper is cool!

I was wondering how the lignum vitae was to work with. I just picked up a pen blank about a week or so ago. It has a pretty interesting smell.
 
Thank you all for the comments.

Sean,

The best way I could describe lignum vitae is waxy. I blew out two blanks at the bottom when drilling for the tubes. I think pert of the problem is a heavy hand on the drill press, but also it may have something to do with the abundance of resin (see Vaughn’s post) which may get hot and expand if you try to drill to fast without clearing the bit. It cut fine, but sanding (my slowest speed is 500 rpm) brought up the resins. After I sanded with the grain, I had to use a flat scraper to remove spots of built up resin before I could continue with a finer grit. I also wiped it down with DNA between grits. I intentionally used a sealer and friction polish instead of CA as I have read here and have experienced that some oily woods cloud up under CA. So far, after a few days with the first pen, it still shines.

I’m going to turn a Lignum stopper tomorrow and I have a Lignum bowl blank that I’ll have to weigh in a few weeks to see if it is losing moisture.

Vaughn,

Do you think your high speed friction method with Lignum would work on a bowl, or might it heat the bowl up too much and possibly crack it? Did the resin gum up your Micro-Mesh? With the resin build up I had on the pen, I almost shudder at the thought of the build up when sanding a bowl. I may have to get a curved scraper.
 
T...Vaughn,

Do you think your high speed friction method with Lignum would work on a bowl, or might it heat the bowl up too much and possibly crack it? Did the resin gum up your Micro-Mesh? With the resin build up I had on the pen, I almost shudder at the thought of the build up when sanding a bowl. I may have to get a curved scraper.

Now that I've thought about it more, I'm not sure I did use Micro Mesh on it. I think I might have just done the paper towel trick by itself. (It's been a few years now, and I'm pretty sure I would have remembered gumming up the Micro Mesh.)

I'm not sure how the natural friction polish work on a bowl. it might be hard to get enough friction. On the pen, I folded the towel into a strip about 1" wide, then wrapped it all the way around the pen and pinched the two ends together (which you should not do with cloth, and is probably not real advisable even with a paper towel). I might have been lucky that I didn't overheat and crack the pen blank. I'd be a bit concerned about cracking a bowl if I could get that much friction on it.
 
All lookin' very fine.
Will the light colored LV turn dark with time? Or green maybe, like some LV?
I've turned some LV and it was OK to turn but I'm kinda used to turning hard-hard woods. I don't recall how I finished.
Bowl, pens, stoppers are very good. :thumb:
 
Frank, don’t know if it will turn color with age or light. Google says the heartwood can have a greenish tint.

Turned a stopper out of the same stuff today. The picture make it look yellow rather than the brown that is is.
 

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I don't know about other pieces of Lignum Vitae, but this is a duck call I made from LV... the wood was green colored when I made the call and still shows some green.
 

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