Kintsugi - Quercus cubric

[Les Symonds]

Kintsugi is the wonderful Japanese practice of taking a near worthless, broken object such as a ceramic pot, and repairing it with a precious or semi precious material, like gold, silver or platinum.
A few days ago I was turning a couple of oak burr pots, one for a commission and one for stock. The commission pot went to plan, but the pot for stock was another matter. it had a big dead knot in the base and, whilst I was shaping the outside of the pot, the knot split into three parts, one of which dissected the tenon that I'd just formed as a chucking point.
The solution came via ca glue to hold the pieces together, then a liberal amount of 2-part epoxy with copper powder. not wanting to fill just a few splits in the knot, I decided to fill all the open features in the grain.











This made it into the shop yesterday morning and sold within 24 hours....I might just have a go at a few more!

C&C always welcome....les

[GBF]

Hi Les I would have liked to have seen I filled with silver so as to create more of a contrast with the wood.
For me copper is too close in colour to the wood.

Regards George

[Les Symonds]

That's a fair point, George....I'll have to research what's available. I have brass and copper, but had never thought of trying anything 'silver'.
Les

[GBF]

ground up Pewter might be worth a try.

Regards George

[Les Symonds]

It would at least by easy to cut back....I wonder if it's available commercially....will do a search.
Les

[bodrighywood]

You can get aluminium powder which polishes up silver Les. Have a look here

Pete

[Les Symonds]

You can get aluminium powder which polishes up silver Les. Have a look here

Pete

Thanks for the link, Pete.....I'm just a bit wary of using aluminium because it might not have the same appeal to customers as metals like copper and brass. As it happens, I've just bought some powdered pewter, so I'm going to do a test and see how it goes.
Les

[bodrighywood]

Nopt sure that you wiull see a difference aas the aluminium looks like silver when polished. Not used pewter in powder form so be interested to see how that looks.

The band in this pot is aluminium by the way
Pete

[edbanger]

Ali powder works well Les I sell loads of it http://www.oliverswoodturning.co.uk/product/aluminium-powder/

I used it on this piece of Bog Oak

Ed

All the best

[georg]

    Must say we go against the trend, Like the overall look of the piece and the subtle blend of the copper...Sorry
   Kind regards Tony di
   

[Les Symonds]

    Must say we go against the trend, Like the overall look of the piece and the subtle blend of the copper...Sorry
   Kind regards Tony di
 

....no need to apologise, I like the copper, as did the customer who bought it.....and as do the members of WTU. It just goes to show that it's personal taste - nobody's right and nobody's wrong - just personal tatste.
Les

[Bryan Milham]

Hi Les,

You can't argue with the fact it sold so fast, the effect created by infilling the knot and open features give the vase such a dramatic appearance as to grab someones attention enough to buy it so fast.

I'm a little with George though, the copper seems a little dull, no shine or metallic appearance. I use Brass powder and have had this, it's the 2 part epoxy that for some reason dulls it down. I realise that the amount you had to fill, the use of CA was not an option (except to hold it together to start with), but it does allow the metal powder to be brighter when finished.

But a great piece that was well worth the effort of saving.

[Les Symonds]

...., the copper seems a little dull, no shine or metallic appearance....
But a great piece that was well worth the effort of saving.

We were talking about this the other evening. In reality, the grains of copper glisten, but the effect can be seen only when movement occurs. When static, there is simply the copper colour that you see in the photo, but if you move, or if the pot moves, the glistening can be quite dramatic.
I guess that what we really need here is a short video!
Les

[Bryan Milham]

Video, now there's an idea, but I'm not sure that the site allows mpgs to be posted. When I put up a document the other day, it was a MS Word .docx file, I could not even post that and had to convert it back to a .doc file.

Somewhere I saw a microwave turntable motor used as a photograph turntable. They are very strange things, run on 240V but rotate at 5 rpm, so great for filming a rotating object. I'll have to see if I can find it again.

[Les Symonds]

.....Somewhere I saw a microwave turntable motor used as a photograph turntable.....

I been thinking of re-cogging an old record player to step-down its revs, but hadn't thought of a micro-wave oven. Aren't they rather dangerous to play about with? I seem to recall something about a component that stores energy even after the oven is disconnected from the mains....or was I being misled?
Les