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This is the first project I have completed after building a lazer attachment for my lathe. Will Post pictures of it later, right now I am excited about this project, my first try at dyeing the complete project. Ron Campbel has been such an inspiration with his fantastic masterpieces. The resulting project was not what I had in mind when I started, was thinking of a brown center birch with white on the outer layer. Would give natural contrasting colors. So I took my chainsaw and dune buggy into my back 40 and found the trail blocked by a 30 inch spruce blow down, it brought a birch tree down too. That solved the tree problem, all I had to do was cut a block, different from what I was looking for but it had something unique about it that I wil explan later.



I had planned on a small opening and a small bottom but I had to lathe the opening large and could not make the bottom small because of a rot like ring defect in the wood. The grain on one side was different than the birch I had used before, wood peckers had pecked many hole through the bark on one side, this led the tree to produce a grian pattern simular to burl texture. Nice. Will look for wood like this in the future. Those sap suckers did a good thing.
This project was turned to the finish stages and dryed in the microwave with in 2 days.




It was then I came up with the idea to make a space capsule for a lid and dye the body flame red and yellow, the moon idea came later.



The picture of the two together is in the thumbnails before I started the finishing process, it looked not quite right so the moon idea was born. It took allot of courage and trepidation to attempt the dying process. Didn't want to mess it up.but jumped in with both feet as they say. My idea was to put the yellow on the bottom and add the red while it was still wet, the red would mix with the yellow and have an orange transition. not quite as planned but I am still happy with it. This is before I put the finish on it



The finish was spray can diamond coat varathane, several light sandings, finishing up by a wet sanding and then polished with diamond buffing compound. The surface is very slick and smooth, looks better in real life than in the pictures. This is a close up of the side with the interesting grain, looks like boiling fire with the dye on it.



The little moon on top, when you turn the top and change angles of looking at it, it goes through the different phase as I tryed to show in the thumbnails. The project may not have been what I started out to do but I am quite happy with the experience.

Thank for looking, suggestions on how to use the dye and genneral comment are all appreciated.

Gallery

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Brian,
What a beautiful vase. Shape, dye & theme, just a total package.
 

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1,558 Posts
Now Brian, I was expecting that you'd turned a rocketship kids toy on your monster lathe….
NOT this beautiful fancy decorative vase….WOW!!!
You even showed us the the tree, the log along with you hauling it…top marks again sir…
 

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141 Posts
That is really good Brian, I love it.
Lots of fun dying stuff hey!!!
Thanks for sharing this.

Bob
 

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I like your experiments with colours. Nice job.
 

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Very cool, Brian!!

Jim
 

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Great ability and imagination. Great work.
 

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From start to finish, my how the creativity flows! Love seeing your pictures of the forest. I was a DA from the Smithers office in 1970's and had great pleasure visiting the Hazeltons and Kispiox Valley. My wife, son and grandkids will be visiting the K'San and the Totems at Kispiox village this week.
Regards, Roman.
 

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Looks like you are learning this dyeing skill fast Brian. Looking forward to more of them.
 

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1 small step for man ….1 giant leap for the woodworker ….....GREAY JOB
 

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Very cool. I am humbled in your presence !
 

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That is a really great looking vase! And I really like the Apollo 11 theme, as I watched live on TV Neil Armstrong take his little jump onto the Moon-pretty amazing stuff to see as a kid! Now it seems nobody has any interest in the Space Program-thanks for keeping the interest alive, at least for me!
 
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