Epoxy Resin Hybrid Bowls

[Harold Balzonia]

These 3 bowls certainly are not going to be to everyone's tastes. Even still, c&c welcome...

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[Ron Bontz]

I like the second one the best. Pretty slick.

[Robert Marshall]

A bit about technique would be interesting, at least to me.

[Lamar Wright]

Very nice Harold, I'm working with resin and wood as well.

[Mike Tilley]

Nice looking bowls!
What type material did you use?
could be a chalange some may want to try.

[Steve Mathews]

You're killin' me. I want to be able to do that.

[Mark Greenbaum]

Nice looking bowls!
What type material did you use?
could be a chalange some may want to try.

Also - did you rough form the wood, and use tape or paper to create dams to hold the resin in place? More info required, please.

[Kevin Jenness]

Here's a link to the site of my neighbor Robert Chatelain who has been using colored epoxy and other materials to enhance his burl turnings for many years, with a fairly thorough explication of technique.

http://users.gmavt.net/rwcturner/hybrid.html

[Harold Balzonia]

Technique wise, the first thing you have to do is find the worst piece of wood possible....

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I've devised an accurate testing measurement to see if a blank is suitable for my kind of work...

1. Show the blank to a fellow woodturner
2. If they laugh at you, you are on the right track
3. If they throw up in their mouth, you've got a good one...

attach the piece of shi* (I mean, wood) to something stable. I use a cut off 2x6, usually. I attach it using hot glue. LOTS of hot glue....

tell your dog to get out of the shop, wrap the hell out of the outside of the blank with shrink wrap, tape, and/or Kevlar and spin the lathe up. Shove a tool you really don't care about into the center and start the insanity.

youll end up with something resembling a bowl or a bunch of pieces of the blank all over your shop. Sometimes the latter is actually a good thing....

if you managed to save a bowl-like shape, you have to spend time framing the inside and outside walls so they are completely water tight. I use aluminum tape. A LOT of aluminum tape... when you shape the rough bowl I'd highly recommend straight/vertical walls that are fairly thick (at least 1 1/4")

i use Total Boat epoxy resin because it is the cheapest resin I can find. Most people who cast resin and wood use Alumilite or West Systems, I think. There are a bunch of different formulae of resins (fast set, slow set, tropical set, clear, crystal clear, polyester resin, water clear, etc, etc....). I use the slow set version. YMMV....

i use Pearl-X powdered pigments to color the resin. No secrets here, just mix what I hope will look good.

i pour the mixed resin into the mold I've made around the walls of the bowl and pray for no leaks. This is the worst part of the process.... leaks happen and they are a pain in the rear to deal with. If I did the mold correctly, the bowl with the resinated walls goes into a pressure pot. I converted a paint pot for this. I load it up to 60 psi or so and leave it overnight. More than once I've opened up the lid and found all the resin in the bottom of the pot because a leak that developed. This is even more depressing than the commercials Sally Struthers used to do in the late 1970's with the starving African children...

I'm convinced that the "best" way to get resin in every void would be to fill the inside of the bowl with resin in many multiple pours, but then you'll end up turning away all that resin in the middle and that is a HUGE cash loss. Resin is damned expensive stuff so I make the molds.

**Side note** -- All resin manufacturers claim to be able to create "bubble free" castings. This is bullsh** (I mean, untruthful). On a flat surface like a table top, or a small rectangle like a pen blank you can get bubble free castings. Not when doing the rims of bowls. At least I haven't figured out how to do it yet.... in my experience, there will always be tiny bubbles hiding in there. I go to therapy twice a week to complain about it.... you can deal with it in your own way....

once the resin is cured you can turn it like a normal bowl. I pull as much of the tape away as possible, but I cut away quite a bit on the lathe, too.... Some resins cure harder than others and will require carbide tools. I leave the walls pretty thick when I pour the resin so I have room to play with the shape a little bit. Plus, you might have to cut out some areas that just didn't get filled or don't look right.

sanding is a normal process but because of the resin, it is important to go to a higher grit than a plain wood bowl. I go to 800, at a minimum. I have finished my hybrid bowls with salad bowl finish, wax, friction polish, and lacquer. They all work.

I've been doing this process for a couple years now and it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what will work for you. Understand before venturing into this playground, that this can be a messy, messy process.

Filling voids/ruts/divots with epoxy is fairly easy and straightforward, but building entire walls is another thing entirely.... I might be the only guy dumb enough to do it... if you really want to give it a go, I recommend buying a gallon kit of epoxy and practice a lot. It's about $100. Don't expect the first few to turn out that great. A pressure pot isn't necessary at first, when learning the techniques, but if you decide to do this technique regularly, I'd highly recommend it. And be prepared for sharpening your HSS tools a lot more than wood turning requires. It's tough on them. Carbide is a wise investment if you want to do this a lot. I make my own tools with solid carbide and they work pretty well for me.