Pyrography box

Hi all,
At last the weather warmed up enough for me to get into the workshop. I still had to have one bar on the electric fire, but at least I could manage some turning.

Here is the lidded box that I said I was going to make in my last post.

It is turned from a 3inch square piece of lime. I use lime because it is a light coloured wood that shows up the pyrography and it is easy to carve. After turning it I drew the flowers on the lid and then carved out all of the wood around them. I also did some shallow carving on the flowers to give the petals a fluted look. This stops them looking flat and helps the light bounce off the paint.

After carving the flowers, I burnt around them with my pyrography iron using a spoon tip. I then changed the tip to a wire point and burnt the large black areas between the flowers. For the paint. I raided my wife's craft cave and used some paints called "Sparkling H2Os" I used a white and pink and they came out very nice.

I then burnt a textured line around the sides of the main box before giving the whole thing several coats of  Chestnut's melamine spray gloss finish.

The box now sit alongside its little brother on the mantelpiece

Here is a picture taken from above. Here is a reminder of what its little brother looks like.

In the new year I'm going to do another piece in the same style to make up a trio, so please what this space to see how it comes out.

Currently, I am working on Christmas stuff which I can't show on here yet in case the intended recipients see it. I will take pictures when they are done and post them on here after the big day.

Anyway, I doubt that I will be posting again before Christmas so please let me take this opportunity to wish you well, I hope you have a merry but peaceful time and Christmas lives up to its promise for you.

Turned carved and burnt

Hi All,
I've given up carving the netsuke, not because I didn't enjoy the process or the results, but because it is so time consuming when I've lots of other projects I want to get on with.

The first of these projects was a little pot. The inspiration came from a small ceramic lidded pot that I found in a junk shop. It was only about 2 inches (50mm) tall but I just loved the shape. Anyway, I purchased the pot for £1.50 and took it home for reference.

Here is a picture of the pot after I'd turned it and you can see the flower design that I have burnt in with my pyrography iron .

Please note that the funny shape at the bottom of the pot is just for mounting it in the chuck and will be cut off when I'm happy with the pot. I have left it on for two reasons. Firstly in case I need to put the pot back onto the lathe and secondly it provides an nice handle for the carving work that will come next.


Here I have relief carved around the flowers to make them stick out in the final piece.

You will also notice the two black line that I have burnt around the pot to give a clean and neat border to the carving and the pyrography texture that I will do later.

In this picture you can see the texturing I have done with my pyrography iron and if you look really closely you will see that the petals of the flowers have also been carved.

Once all the carving and texturing was done, I painted the flowers and finish it off with a melamine spray.
Here is the finished pot complete with lid and a coin to give it a bit of scale.

I hope you like it, I thoroughly enjoyed making it and think it looks great sitting on my mantelpiece. The only problem is that it look a little lonely so I'm going to make it a companion. I like to have a decent idea about what I'm going to do so I have done this drawing of the lid of the box to give me a guide.

Now all I've got to do is turn it, carve it, burn it and paint it. If you would like to see how I get on please watch out for my next post. If you have any questions about this post or any others I will be pleased to help.