Well first I built 3 more HDPE molds to step up casting a few hybrid knife scales goin cross the big pond to Neil. Been stupid at work lately, and messin with my schedule. Having completed that, got 4 sets of scales poured and in the pot under many pounds of pressure, but I forgot to take pictures of any of that, and it's hard to take pictures once they're in the pot.
Then I tossed a load of blanks in the oven to cook. Grabbed the last load of blanks cooked, and spent awhile on the sander cleaning them up. Half of those were dyed the first time around, so those went back in the pot for the second dip and vacuum job. Cleaned up the shop a little, had supper, and it was time for the blanks to come out of the oven, and I went ahead sanded them straight out the oven.
Then I turned to fun and games and turned some goodies.
Spalted Oak Keychain
Double Dyed Box Elder Keychain - Orange just didn't play out nice in this piece.
Jamaican Dogwood gracing a Stylus Pen in Gun Metal
Then I got into the ugly one. Ever turned something you just absolutely hated the looks of, but figured someone else might love it, and when you got done with it, it was really hard to hate it, even if it had been a pain in the ass to turn?
Dyed and stabilized a Spalted Red Oak blank... Double dyed, blue and orange. The orange looked good on the outside, did not penetrate at all or simply doesn't show. Only thing I can figure is the first round sealed everything when I cooked it. The blue dye looked like Sugar, Honey, Ice Tea, was a really pale blue, although I had a LOT of dye in the little bitty batch I dipped it in. I'm really not sure what caused what I got on that one.
Regardless I decided to turn it, got it down to size, started sanding and I had this incessant thump on one side of the blank, looked and didn't see anything, couldn't really feel anything out of place. Started over, and it's still there. Upon further inspection, VERY CLOSE UP, it apparently had a fine check through the middle of the blank at precisely the depth it turned to size. And, there was a little bitty flat spot about a 1/16" wide. So I sorta topped that with some CA, to get it back up where it needed to be, and further attempted to make it round. Then there were little bitty holes everywhere to fill. Was not liking the looks of the dye job, needed to darken things a little so after sanding good, I rubbed it down good with BLO to darken the piece, then sanded it out again to try and pull some highlights into it. It worked sorta.
Still looks a tad bit funky to me, but in a very mysterious sort of way. Blank has a lot going on in it, the dye looks totally out of place in one spot, but turn it just a hair and it takes on a whole different appearance. Definitely not going to the top of the favorites list, but not on the bottom either.
