Light Pull

Hi all,
Last week my wife asked me to put my newly found woodturning skills to good use and make her a light-pull for the bathroom. She wanted some flowers on it it go with the rest of the decor was the only stipulation, other than that I could do whatever I wanted.

I opted for a simple pear/gourd shape and decided to burn some daisies onto it. These would then be painted with acrylic paints to make them stand out.

Here is a picture of the turning, which was done from a piece of tulip wood. On it you will see that I have randomly burnt a daisy pattern. Also note that I have not parted it off yet because I need to put it back on the lathe to finish it. (for non woodturners, the last sentence means that the big ugly lump of the wood at the bottom isn't part of the light-pull, it is the means by which the turning is attached to the lathe.

Because of the shape of the wood, tracing daisies onto it would be very difficult so I just draw them on by hand. They are easy to draw if you follow a simple procedure.
1 Draw a small circle for the centre.
2 Draw a single petal at 12 o'clock.
3 Draw another petal the same size at 6'oclock
4 Then another at 9 o'clock
5 Then another a 3 o'clock
6 Now just fit another petal in each of the four gaps
Practice on a piece of paper first and you'll find that once you have done a 3 or 4 it will become very easy.
If you have a go at doing something like this don't be tempted to leave it like this and call it done. When I first started doing pyrogrphy I did a lot of outline work like this and was scared to do any more in case I spoiled it. Now however, I rarely leave my pyrography at the outline stage.

This photo shows how I go about shading in around the daises.

And here it is with the shading complete.

If you compare the first photo with the one above I'm sure that you'll agree that the shading in makes all the difference. The next step was to paint the daises, I use my wife's system 3 artist acrylics but any decent acrylic paint will do. Don't use watercolour paints because it will come off during the finishing process.

I know my wife likes things to be super shiny so I decided to put a CA finish on it. CA, or superglue as it is commonly known, is used for finishing turned pens, but I thought it might work on something this size just as well. Whether or not it stands up to the steamy atmosphere of the bathroom is another matter and I will let you know if it goes tits up.

Here is the finished light pull hanging in its place.

Ignore the black blob underneath because that is just the head of a screw that is holding the dado rail to the wall. Anyway, I like the pull and my wife was very pleased with it too. In fact, she was so pleased that she asked me to make two more, one for turning the shower on and another for the shower extractor fan. Ah well, it's nice to be appreciated, perhaps I'll get chance to turn another pen one day soon. If you have any comments, or questions about pyrography, I'd love to hear them.