Woodturning Materials
So, what can you use as a wood turning material? The better question is, what CAN’T you use! The wood lathe can certainly be used to create objects from most any wood you can imagine, and probably a fair amount of woods you have never heard of much less imagined. But the possibilities don’t stop there. I also use acrylic plastics, deer antler, water buffalo horn, off-cuts from Corian counter tops, corncobs (no, really, I swear), wood composites, and even custom made pens with items encased in special polymers that allow you to do decoupage-like items. One can even rescue the shavings from today’s bowls to make tomorrow’s pens through a process named by its creator, Phoenix Pens. Really, the only limitation is your imagination.
Drilling the center of the cut to size pen blanks is often, for me, the single most frustrating and difficult part of the entire pen making process. Every …
Obviously, in order to cut the blanks to size, some type of cutting instrument, tool, or machine is required. I suppose a pen maker could use a handsaw, …
Any drilling action will result in friction which creates heat. While Corian is designed to be resistant to heat in its use as a countertop material, that doesn’t …
Imbuia earns high marks for its coloration. The heartwood color of Imbuia can vary substantially. Typically, one will find medium to dark brown colors and sometimes the …
But what we do know is that the wood of Weeping Boer Bean has a dense, fine and even texture, though the grain is wavy. The sapwood is …
When wood workers speak nostalgically of “genuine” or “real” Mahogany, they are usually referring to Cuban, or West Indies, Mahogany, botanically known as Swietenia mahogany. The genus Swietenia …
As sometimes is the case with tropical woods, Movingui finds many uses in traditional African medicine in the areas in which it is endemic. Pounded Movingui bark is …