I made four platters from Afromosia recently which is a beautiful and easy to turn wood from Africa. The platters are 15″, 13″ and 12″ wide and all 2″ tall.
I’ve worked with Afromosia before and I knew it was easy to work with and that proved to be true with these platters. Afromosia is a very powdery wood so you don’t get shavings so much as you get sprays of dust right in the face. Be sure to wear a face shield as well as eye protection or you will be eating the wood as well as turning it.
12″ and 13″ Afromosia Platters
I did have some trouble with the Afromosia being a bit brittle and splintery when cut very thin on the edges of the platters. I like edges that are thin enough to practically cut you, and sometimes they have, but that was difficult to achieve here. In addition to being splintery beware that splinters from Afromosia, as with Wenge, have a higher tendency than normal to get infected. I had to dull the edges quite a bit to get a nice finish on them but I still think they look good.
If you haven’t tried Afromosia yet I encourage you to try it. You can get nice size kiln dried round blanks from Got Wood in a range and sizes and prices up to a very nice 13″ x 2″.
Two 15″ Afromosia Platters
All cuts were made using the Easy Wood Tool system on my Robust American Beauty lathe. Forward chucking was in a Nova Chuck, while reverse chucking was done using a Easy Wood Tools Easy Chuck with Big Easy Jaws and Extension. Sanding was with Gold and Green Wave sanding discs from Packard Woodworks. Final finish is Shellawax. Note that this time I applied and buffed a coat of Shellawax EEE Ultra Shine as an under layer before applying the Shellawax. EEE Ultra Shine is a shellac/wax in its own right but it contains microabrasives (tripoli powder or rotten stone) as well. It is applied and the excess cleaned off and with the same rag and the lathe on it is buffed to a decent shine. This prepares the surface for the final Shellawax incredibly well. The mirror like finish was like none I have achieved before and I am extremely pleased with the result.
As always, I wish all my readers a great experience in whatever your wood working interests happen to be and to those who like working with lathes especially, do a good turn today!