Spalted Pecan bowl stabilized with thin epoxy--pics--

[Curtis O. Seebeck]

This past weekend I cut up some really nice spalted pecan bowl blanks for my Adoptwood.com business. I decided to try one myself and make what would become the largest bowl I have made to date.

The wood cut great but was fairly soft in a few spots and tended to tear out on the endgrain pretty bad. I decided to try some stabilizing and it worked great. This is what I did:

I turned the bowl close to the final dimensions I wanted. I then mixed up some System Three epoxy and thinned it with alcohol until it was the consistency of real maple syrup. I took the bowl off the lathe and applie the epoxy to the bowl with a brush until it would not hold anymore. In a number of places it soaked all the way through the bowl even before I did the inside. I then let it cure overnight and mounted back on the lathe the following evening. Man it sure did turn nice! It turned like regular wood with really nice curly shavings.

It also sanded very easily. I sanded to 12,000 mm and then applie BLO to bring out the color better. After that, it was a couple of coats of Watco gloss brushing lacquer applied as a friction finish with a rag. A final buff with a chamois and this is what I ended up with:







The bowl is 7 3/4" wide by 3 1/4" tall with wall thickness of just a hair under 1/4". It is my best work so far.

Please give me some HONEST feedback about the bowl and it's form. I am also looking for comments on my photo setting. It was done outside on a rock pile towards the end of the day with lite flash. Just a plain old 4.1 mp Sony camera on automatic settings.

[Cecil Arnold]

Other than it is awesome, the one turning class I took the guy said you should come up to the final dimension rapidly, which I took to mean a smaller bottom. Having said that, I like it the way it is.

[Bernie Weishapl]

Curtis that bowl is awesome looking. It really turned out nice. You did a great job on it.

[Andy Hoyt]

Nice one Curtis. Gotta love that spalted stuff.

[Bruce Shiverdecker]

Aplause Aplause..................The Crowd Roars.

Very Good Lookin' Bowl.

Bruce

[Raymond Overman]

Pecan sure will spalt nicely. Great looking bowl and interesting technique. I've got some punky dogwood burl that I may have to try that with.

[John Hart]

Thanks for describing your process. It gives me another route to follow!

As far as the bowl goes...Honestly? The form is wonderful. Just the right amount of flare....not too much to distract from the intracacy of the grain. Nicely done.

The pic? Looks good. It comes close to being camoflaged because of the spalting...but not quite. If the rock was just a little more multicolored, I think the bowl would have disappeared. But it looks good as well.

[Chris Barton]

Curtis,

Great looking bowl! When I thinned epoxy in the past I have always used acetone, but you used alcohol, interesting. If you got good saturation with the epoxy then using BLO may have been unnecessary because I would think that the epoxy would prevent the BLO from getting into the wood. I would wonder what your bowl would look like if it were all epoxy finish and after well cured buffed with the Beal or similar system? Great bowl though!

[Dick Parr]

Very nice job Curtis, love all the spalting in that piece of wood. Very nice looking bowl.

[Glenn Hodges]

When you are as dumb as I am you can learn something every day, and the tip on thinning epoxy with alcohol to use on spalted wood is a great tip I plan on using. I have only nice things to say about this bowl, the spalting looks as if nature has used a paint brush on it, good form, and finish. Thanks for the post.

[Mike Ramsey]

I have some spalted Pecan & have been thinking about how to stabilize
it...I think I will try your method. Beautiful bowl Curtis.

[Keith Burns]

Very nice Curtis. Great form and finish . I'll have to try your method of stabilizing.

[Curtis O. Seebeck]

Thanks for the nice comments everyone!

Chris Barton: I too used to use acetone to thin my epoxy and was always having problems with it not setting very firm. I then read a tip somewhere about alcohol being the preferred thinning agent and have been pleasantly surprised with the results. The reason for the BLO is that even though I got good penetration, the hard, solid wood tended to not take up much of the epoxy. It mainly satuarated the soft areas, leaving the hard areas less satuarated. It is still a wood bowl, not a chunk of epoxy with wood in it!

[John Nicholas]

Curtis,

I like the shape of the bowl. The spalting shows off well. Thank you for describing your stabilizing process. I have a bunch of spalted maple that I will have to try that on.

One of the things I look at for a bowl is how the foot shows off the shape. The setting of your picture did not allow that. But --- I didn't notice that I couldn't see how the foot showed off the shape until I scrolled down and saw the image with the foot. Interesting thought process there for me.

Thanks

John

[Ernie Nyvall]

First of all thanks for the alcohol/epoxy tip.

The bowl is really very nice Curtis.

As far as the photo goes, the bowl almost blends with the background. If you want the spalting to pop out, I believe you could use a black background. I'm certainly no photographer, but whatever color you want to stand out in an item, you can use as a backdrop and it will bring that color to the front.

Ernie