Coloured Needle Pot

Hi all, I have been watching a lot of woodturning on You Tube recently and was amazed by a video by a Scottish woodturner called Gary Lowe. It wasn't the actual woodturning that caught my eye, but the result that he got from using wood stains. If you have ever tried using wood stains you will know that they are a a difficult medium to use, especially if you are mixing colours.

Anyway, Gary amazed me with the finish he got on his project, which was as delightful as the best Moorcroft pot I've ever seen. Here is a link to the video, it is about 20 minutes long but worth every minute.

After I'd seen the video I decided to try out what he'd explained on a small project, one that I hadn't invested much time in, so if it went tits up, which some of my projects are apt to do, I hadn't wasted too much time.

So, I turned a small needle pot and sanded it within an inch of its life. Before starting this project my finest sandpaper was 600 grit, which is a bit like the stuff you put in the bottom of a budgie's cage when compare with the 2000 grit I was about to used. I think the fine sanding is one of the key points to make the colouring a success, so if you want to have a go, persevere and make that wood shine like a mirror. Go through all the grits all the way to 2000 and don't miss any out.

The second key point is the use of sanding sealer. After sanding, give it a coat of sanding sealer then give it rub down with some 2000 grit, and then give it another coat of sanding sealer. Now, some of you may be thinking that wood stain should be put on before the sanding sealer, and indeed, that is what it says on the instructions for the stains. The reason for this is that under normal circumstances you want the stain to be absorbed and sink into the wood. However, in this project, we require the stains to lie on the top on the sealer to allow each colour to be blended with the next.

Here is my finished pot.

I used  stains from the Chestnut sample range and applied them with a small pieces of scrunched up kitchen towel. A fresh piece for each colour and to hell with the cost. They were applied in this sequence.
Yellow
Orange
Green
Red,
Purple
Blue
The idea is to dab them on and let them mingle together. You need to work quickly and methodically and not get the whole thing too wet. If you do get it too wet all the colours will mix together and you will finish up with a brown pot. Ask any artist and he will tell you the easiest way to mix brown is to just add a lot of different colours together. Those of you who are old enough to remember, Plastacine (a modelling clay) will recall that when a lot of colours were mixed together the result was brown and that is the colour that most kids finished up with in their Plastacine box.

After the colours had dried I finished the pot with several coats of high gloss melamine lacquer and it came out really well.

Having been successful with this pot I thought I'd try out my new technique on a pen but that certainly didn't go to plan. I will tell you about that episode in my next post. and give you my thoughts on using melamine lacquer for a finish.