I had made some small dishes in the early part of the year. My Mom saw them and wanted to use them as TV-time snack dishes. They worked out well so she asked me for some more.
I had two pieces of “mystery wood” that were of the right thickness and dimensions to give me a total of four additional snack dishes as well as one small 4″ x 2″ piece of Holly, so I turned all of those into snack dishes for Mom.
The only wood that I am certain of is the Holly and I have written about this wood in the past. The major difference between the first Holly I tried and this one is dryness. My first experiences with Holly were with green wood while this piece was dry. The dry piece worked quite easily and I have revised my thinking on Holly. Given a nice piece of Holly that is dry it proves to be a remarkably easy wood with which to work. It does cut a bit chunky on the end grain but the wood is soft enough that it sands out easily. The dish took a nice Shellawax finish without changing the color of the wood. There is some slight fungal staining in this piece and that is almost always true of larger pieces of Holly, especially those pieces not immediately kiln dried (this piece was waxed and air dried over several years time) after cutting.
Five Snack Dishes
The two dishes on the left are made of a mystery wood. It is reddish in color has a pronounced wavy grain that reminds me of Padauk. However, I am quite certain it isn’t Padauk because the distinctive odor is not present and the wood is quite soft which Padauk is not. This wood cut easily and cleanly, overall quite easy to work with. The smaller of the two pieces is 4″ x 1″ and the slightly larger piece is 4.25″ x 1″. If I had any idea what it was I would work with it again. I think the wood MIGHT be Australian only because the source of the wood was an auction of the stock of a woodworker whom I believe I was told favored Australian woods. But anyone’s guess is as good as mine.
The two dishes on the right are yet another mystery wood. This mystery material was very hard and dense. Unfortunately it was also chippy during turning with pieces peeling off the ends. The only other wood I can compare it to is Wenge but I am certain this is not Wenge because the color is completely wrong. The grain on this wood is open and quite distinct. There are multiple color variations throughout the small pieces which adds interest. The wood was hard to turn but it cleaned up nicely in the end. Given the chance I would think long and hard before attempting to use it again, especially in a larger piece. The smaller piece is 3.75″ wide and the larger piece is 4″ wide. Both pieces are 1″ deep.
All dishes were made on my Robust American Beauty lathe, using Easy Wood Tools for the turning and Nova Chucks for holding. All pieces were sanded with sanding discs from Packard Woodworks and the final finish is ShellaWax.
This was an interesting and quick project. It is always fun to use new materials, and to discover that a different piece of a material used before might have difference qualities, even if I don’t know what the materials happen to be. I hope Mom enjoys these snack dishes during evening television viewing.