Pendants for the ladies in my family

 

During one of our clubs events this past summer our president David Bell showed us the process of casting with Allumilite and various different colour pigments. Some of the results were truly amazing. What that demonstration did for me was to get me thinking of some different applications of this really enlightening process. 

Sometime during last spring I received some Cherry burl and had a little piece lying around. My objective was to turn this little chuck of burl into a cylinder about 4cm. in diameter and appr. 10 cm long. The next part of the process was to turn a piece of Black Walnut into a hollow tube that would be about 4.5cm. inside measurement by 10cm long and the walls being .5 cm thick. When I had these done I took them to have the hollow areas and the void areas filled with Allumilite and under pressure cured it in place. Once this was all cured I took this finished piece to the bandsaw and cut the new piece into about 8 slices of 5mm thickness each. The next thing was to turn them an polish them into the finished product as shown in the picture above.

I did post them on a wood turners forum and got really positive comments. I just gave one to my youngest daughter and she really loved hers, I sure hope that the others will be received with the same enthusiasm. 

Blessings on your day, Dirk Hoogendoorn

Christmas is Coming!!

This past week I thought that maybe I should do some turning for Christmas presents or just little tokens to give away. So after doing some musings as to what to turn, pendants, inside out turning or bird house Christmas Tree Ornaments, the decision was the little bird houses. When I was done turning a few of these I wanted to display them for some comments so I took some to the local donut shop. They were an instant hit and I had a few orders for some bird houses very quickly. Now to do some more turning and see if I can't turn that interest into something more tangible. Just yesterday I let the owner of an art gallery see them and asked for her comments on them. She said she loved them, but not the bird. In her words the bird just looks like putting a Walmart dressing on Gucci  attire. Your comments are appreciated.

Grey Bruce Woodturners Guild Demonstration

Well this past weekend my wife and I took our RV to Mac Gregor Point Provincial Park to do some camping and to partake in the "Wild for the Arts" Festival held at the park last Saturday and Sunday.
The weather was sunny during the day and real cool at night, we were really thankful for the furnace in our RV. My wife spent some time on the lovely riding trails there and I spent my time with 2 other turners from our Guild. We demonstrated the various aspects of woodturning and explained the projects that we were working on. We also had the opportunity to showcase our work on our display tables.
The comments that we received from the various visitors that visited our site was really uplifting for me. This was my first full out event for displaying my work and having people watch me turn and listening to me explaining the various stages of the projects that I was turning at the time.
After all was said and done I came away with some new insights as to what I would do the next time that I would be involved in an activity like this. More variety and more smaller and more affordable items on the display table.
Dirk Hoogendoorn, woodturner

My First Blog

Well this is cool, a blog of my own. To share and to inform others of what is going on in my life at this time. This past week I have worked on 4 different turning projects. At the beginning of the week I received a couple of burls from Maple trees. Burls are growths on trees a little like warts that protrude from the tree trunk, or limb. In the burls you can find some of the most amazing wood grain patterns, usually very random throughout the burl. When turned the piece usually shows the extent of the random grain and growth inclusions