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fractal burning

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Tom Beatty

Tom Beatty

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a question of fractal burning. in past threads the AAW policy was stated and I understand the policy of demonstrations or encouragement of fractal burning. however it was stated by two AAW staff members in 2017 that pieces that had been decorated using fractal burning could still be displayed in galleries at AAW events. Is this still true?
 
American Woodturner 34-3 page 5
"Woodturners of all skill levels are encouraged to show their work, but note that per AAW policy, pieces featuring fractal burning will not be allowed."

And on page 6

"Instant Gallery
The AAW Symposium Instant Gallery is the largest display of turned-wood objects under one roof. It is a great opportunity for any and all registered attendees to sell or just show off their work. Note that you may display up to three pieces, but per AAW policy, works featuring fractal burning will not be allowed."
 
Most welcome, it amazes me how we can reach out over a thousand miles with the click of a keyboard. I think of growing up, a long distant call to Grandma was a major event...
 
And 18-years later Fukushima is still spewing endless amounts of radioactive elements into the Pacific ocean.
If they outlawed every pastime that ever incurred a fatality it would be a very boring existence to say the least.
The cave men would have died out for the outlawing of the use of fire. Once you start down that path there is no end to the madness.
 
Mike Johnson said:
18-years later Fukushima is still spewing endless amounts of radioactive elements into the Pacific ocean.
If they outlawed every pastime that ever incurred a fatality it would be a very boring existence to say the leas
Click to expand...

The first fractal burning death cited on the AAW web site was March 2017. Since then a total 21 documented deaths are known.

AAW policy is only for AAW events and AAW publications. AAW members and AAW chapters can make their own decisions.

AAW is urging people not to Fractal burn because of the high risk. 21 deaths in 2 years.
There are undoubtedly more that were not reported as Fractal burning.

I don’t follow how the Fukushima disaster relates to the topic. The earthquake was in 2011. I don’t think there have been any deaths or radiation poisoning reported from the nuclear accident although numerous deaths have been reported relating to the evacuation.
It’s probably not a good idea to visit the site - doing so probably won’t kill you and Fractal burning has killed at least 21.
 
It's a shame. The fractal burning is not dangerous, it is the home made equipment and folks not smart enough to avoid touching live currents. To think my old farmhouse had live knob and tube wiring when I bought it. Then again. I knew enough not to touch the wires. (Corrected the situation within a week) I guess some folks would stick their fingers in a light socket..
 
Perry Hilbert said:
It's a shame. The fractal burning is not dangerous, it is the home made equipment and folks not smart enough to avoid touching live currents. To think my old farmhouse had live knob and tube wiring when I bought it. Then again. I knew enough not to touch the wires. (Corrected the situation within a week) I guess some folks would stick their fingers in a light socket..
Click to expand...
Your house wiring was not carrying 2,000-12,000 volts either. Odd how a nuclear disaster and common house wiring can be cited as comparative examples in fractal burning.
 
Mike Johnson said:
And 18-years later Fukushima is still spewing endless amounts of radioactive elements into the Pacific ocean.
If they outlawed every pastime that ever incurred a fatality it would be a very boring existence to say the least.
The cave men would have died out for the outlawing of the use of fire. Once you start down that path there is no end to the madness.
Click to expand...
I'm scratching my head at the Fukushima nuclear disaster comment... Since we are way off topic, we have found at least 5 boats that came from Japan. after the Tsunami. One of them a friend of mind tow it back to the harbor, took it home, and fix it. But not before he caught a ton of Mahi Mahi that was living under the boat. He did not test the fish or the boat for radiation. Out club does not support or endorse Fractal burning.
 
The correlation you are looking for is that nuclear power plants are most often cited as very dangerous as is fractal burning. Yet both continue to this day. And it would be my guess that deaths from mentioned disaster due to radiation is many more than the 21 from FB.
 
At the end of the day it is incumbent upon the AAW and for that matter it's members to promote safe wood turning. Our personal lines may differ but collectively a base line of safety needs to be set for the new and experienced in the hobby. Fukushima was a terrible disaster but the analogy Imo is way off. Nuclear power in that region is born of necessity our wood turning obviously is not.
 
Richard Coers said:
Your house wiring was not carrying 2,000-12,000 volts either. Odd how a nuclear disaster and common house wiring can be cited as comparative examples in fractal burning.
Click to expand...
It isn't the volts, it is the amps. I have 12,000 to 18,000 volts running through my electric livestock fence. Won't kill you, but you will know you have been slapped. .
 
I attended the American Association of Woodturners symposium a couple of weeks ago. A representative said they were aware of 14 deaths from this dangerous practice. My unit used a neon sign transformer, that while dangerous, was far less so than the microwave transformers that folks are using with too little understanding of the risks and proper safeguards. A friend of mine told me the story of an idiot that purchased a unit and was so excited to try it out, he tested it with the work on a SawStop table saw with a cast iron top. You can't measure stupid. After some consideration, I have taken down my 4 YouTube videos on making and using a fractal burning unit because of the risk of some idiot getting motivated to try it after watching one of my videos. Folks are entitled to make their own decisions on dangerous activities. I don't need to encourage this one.
 
Richard Coers said:
You're saying the microwave transformer is safe then since you like to compare it to electrical sources on your farm?
Click to expand...
I never said that and it is irrelevant to the issue. It is the amps that kill. I get painful shocks from telephone wires. I have seen you tube instructions about shooting toy cannons and the idiot did not cover the can of gun powder and the cannon ignition sparks lit the powder can and caused an explosion. It comes down to planning and planning for safety. A friend has built a cabinet for fractal burning. The leads are double insulated and the unit cannot be turned on unless the cabinet doors are latched shut. Opening the latch turns the thing off. Obviously several steps of planning and safety above normal. And no, he used a specially ordered transformer from a neon sign supply house.

A group can take the initiative to promote safety or just ignore safety by excluding the work from their pervue. Has the exclusion stopped any one from doing it? Has anyone died because a safer design was not promoted? It all comes down to common sense.
 
Tom Beatty said:
a question of fractal burning. in past threads the AAW policy was stated and I understand the policy of demonstrations or encouragement of fractal burning. however it was stated by two AAW staff members in 2017 that pieces that had been decorated using fractal burning could still be displayed in galleries at AAW events. Is this still true?
Click to expand...

You might be thinking about SWAT, Tom.

Mike Johnson said:
And 18-years later Fukushima is still spewing endless amounts of radioactive elements into the Pacific ocean.
If they outlawed every pastime that ever incurred a fatality it would be a very boring existence to say the least.
The cave men would have died out for the outlawing of the use of fire. Once you start down that path there is no end to the madness.
Click to expand...

Are you sure that you didn't mean to post in the Vulcanology Forum? The AAW hasn't told anybody that that they can't do fractal burning, but when you come to play in their sandbox you play by their rules. End of story.

Perry Hilbert said:
It's a shame. The fractal burning is not dangerous, it is the home made equipment and folks not smart enough to avoid touching live currents. To think my old farmhouse had live knob and tube wiring when I bought it. Then again. I knew enough not to touch the wires. (Corrected the situation within a week) I guess some folks would stick their fingers in a light socket..
Click to expand...

As long as a human isn't involved it might be safe, but otherwise there is risk. Even if well trained, one inadvertent misstep and it's game over ... there's no RESET button. But, nobody is telling you that can't do fractal burning. Is your mention of knob and tube wiring an argument in favor of or against fractal burning?
 
Our club had a demonstration scheduled to show how to use and make a transformer to do fractal burning. After the AAW gave its recommendation, the topic was wisely changed. We are wood turners not an electricians guild.

My sister is a nurse at a large hospital, and she helped treat a young man who was shocked doing fractal burning. It was a very devastating injury even though it missed his heart. She called me after seeing this and made sure I no longer do any fractal burning. Fractal burning is taking very dangerous equipment and using it in a way that it was never intended to be used. This creates far greater risk than is typically involved in wood turning.
 
I was reading a study done by the forestry department that was researching the number of accidents and deaths involving the use of chainsaws over the years trying to make a correlation with types of accidents and cause of fatalities. The study officially states that on average 36,000 accidents occur each year involving the use of chainsaws, out of the 36,000 accidents they state few deaths occur but when you read further into the report they point out about 30 deaths a year that are attributed to the chainsaw accident being the root cause. Basically you can amputate a limb and not be able to make to the hospital in time and bleed out, or die from an infection or complications.

If everyone would just give up there addiction to wood products we could save 30 lives every year. We could save the planet and all of the trees.

We all know that the wood industry is a large market and 30 people a year is a number most of us are willing to accept. Working around powered equipment can be dangerous and accidents do happen. Working around energized electrical circuits is a skill set most people do not have and most should never attempt. Electricity like radioactive elements is something you can not see, smell, taste, hear, sense until it is too late. The average person these days is not disciplined enough to attempt working on energized electrical circuits, most utility companies require weeks of training and months of hands on training with other skilled practitioners. And these trained individuals still incur fatalities each year from people not focused on the task at hand. Without proper training and an understanding of the dangers they are working with the average person would not know a safe or unsafe practice.

I have been reading other posts about people not wanting to learn basic turning skills or how to sharpen tools, because they don't have the patience to learn these skills. These are the same people that most likely won't use safety equipment and P.P.E. because it takes too much time and effort. These are the same people that usually end up as a statistic in the accident studies because they had a better faster way of getting something done or at least that is what they thought.

You can't fix stupid and they seem to be producing them faster than ever before.
 
Mike Johnson said:
most utility companies require weeks of training and months of hands on training with other skilled practitioners. And these trained individuals still incur fatalities each year from people not focused on the task at hand. Without proper training and an understanding of the dangers they are working with the average person would not know a safe or unsafe practice.
Click to expand...

This is a paraphrase of the early AAW letter - almost identical
There are also people in the industry who do everything right and still get electrocuted.

I’m always intrigued by the the policies put in place for lightning the past 30+ years.
Lightning deaths have decreased from about 90 a year to 60 a year. Some of it due to fewer farm workers but some due to policies that get people out of the open during thunder storms.
I have been affected numerous times at sporting events, airplanes waiting for baggage to load, not being able to watch the bat flight from Carlsberg caverns (got to see it the next night) ...
A tremendous expense to save so few lives but ... I can sit in an airplane lots of hours and not miss a football that never gets played if it saves a life.
 
Mike Johnson said:
These are the same people that most likely won't use safety equipment and P.P.E. because it takes too much time and effort. These are the same people that usually end up as a statistic in the accident studies because they had a better faster way of getting something done or at least that is what they thought.

You can't fix stupid and they seem to be producing them faster than ever before.
Click to expand...

I've had the exact opposite experience. I work for a utility and it's the older more experienced, more complacent workers that are less likely to practice proper safety and wear ppe. It's less often stupid and more often complacency that causes incidents.
 
I don't think it is fair to categorize people as stupid ... perhaps untrained, ill informed, misinformed, or sometimes even a careless attitude. Mistakes can be stupid, but that doesn't make the person stupid. I am also bothered by the general callous attitude about human death that seems so pervasive these days. Maybe it's from being subjected to information overload. Regardless of the various circumstances that led to those who were electrocuted while attempting fractal burning, I'm sure that they all thought that they were safe. None of them "deserved" to die, but electricity has no moral compass. I can't imagine the devastating effect on their loved ones.
 
I hate to extend this thread, but here goes... I have done my share of so-called fractal burning or Lictenberg pyrography, and still do it. I happen to like the effect, in some cases. I also think I do it safely (but seriously, who doesn't think that about themselves - so that's a non-statement).

That said: I entirely agree and support the AAW's position.

There are many dangers involved in our craft, but it seems to me that most of them are in some way "visible" (or audible, etc): you can see the sharp teeth on a chainsaw flying around the bar, you can see the chunks of wood flinging towards your face, you can see the sawdust in the air.

Even though we can see the danger, most of us need some education and occasional reminding about those dangers (like: I see the dust, but "forget" to wear my mask). However, the visibility of the danger (i.e. the dust) can make the safety lesson easier to understand (I shouldn't put that in my lungs) and also serves to remind (cough, cough... where's my mask?).

Most "normal" folks have no idea how electricity works. On top of that, most of those who do haven't a clue about what happens at high voltage, when the air itself becomes a conductor. Also there's no visible evidence of the danger: seems to me that makes this dangerous to promote.

Even if you "educate" someone about high-voltage safety, once they're on their own they have no visible reminder - it's all just book-learnin'. So regardless of your own skill or understanding, transferring that knowledge to another person doesn't really carry with it any visible reminder of the lesson, and we all tend to loose those purely academic lessons eventually.

So no matter how much _I_ (or you) might understand high-voltage electricity and how safely work with it, I don't know that I can properly transfer that same level of knowledge and safe-practices to someone else (and make it stick). Since part of the AAW's mission is education, I can't see how they can either. And as education starts with promotion (here's something cool... come learn how to do it) they can't very well promote it (here's something cool... don't do it?). So no promotion makes total sense.

Just my $0.02 (or less). You may now return to flinging wood chips at your face (and/or face-shield).


PS: Please don't misinterpret me as saying electricity is the same as sawdust. I'm sure they're probably different in several interesting ways.

PPS: Please don't misunderstand: I'm not calling anyone here "normal".
 
I come at this discussion from a slightly different perspective - what’s the point of fractal burning? I took up turning 15 years ago and have been gradually accumulating and building a skill set ever since. If the point is to embellish your work, carving, pyrography, even texturing tools will get you there with repeatable results and easily managed safety. Working to a plan/vision to develop a piece may not allow for all the forms serendipity can take while producing the elusive accidental work of art, but good craft is a reward all to its self, and generally that serendipity occurs while spending the time to embellish the piece.
Perhaps its just me, but I’ve seen very few if any fractal burnt pieces that rose beyond the level of relatively interesting. Perhaps if a pattern were drawn with conducting media on the piece directing the energy to burn along that pattern...but then that’s controlling the process - not the same as accepting what just happens. And then of course the same end could be accomplished with a well designed pattern file and a cnc router without the possibility of losing your life in the search for your art.
Its a little like filling your car with paint and driving into a wall hoping to create a mural.
I support the AAW’s stand on the issue.
 
Fractal patterns are similar to snowflakes or woodgrain you will never find two that are the same. There are photographers that take thousands of images of lightning strikes to get that one image that makes an award winning photo. Of the pieces that I have seen people produce most of them get carried away with the process and most of them do not understand how the process even works. There are certain wood species that work best for this process and there are several chemicals that can be used to influence the growth and movements of the patterns generated. It is the very fine fractal pattern details that can make stunning pieces if done correctly.
 
Guy Scronce said:
Our club had a demonstration scheduled to show how to use and make a transformer to do fractal burning. After the AAW gave its recommendation, the topic was wisely changed. We are wood turners not an electricians guild.

My sister is a nurse at a large hospital, and she helped treat a young man who was shocked doing fractal burning. It was a very devastating injury even though it missed his heart. She called me after seeing this and made sure I no longer do any fractal burning. Fractal burning is taking very dangerous equipment and using it in a way that it was never intended to be used. This creates far greater risk than is typically involved in wood turning.
Click to expand...
Smart move by your club. Someone who is not a qualified and licensed electrician shouldn't even attempt to build one of these death boxes.
A firefighter friend of mine lost his arm because he touched a live wire during an industrial fire with 12,000 volts running through it. Luckily the amps were low and he didn't die, but there was enough damage to have his arm amputated.
Is making some design on wood with high voltage worth the risk? Not for me. Anyways, I can make much nicer looking designs using my pyrography pen. It may get a little hot, and it's much safer to use.
I think it's more of the thrill of using high voltage than the end result you get. I also feel it's a fad that has already seen its day in the sun. All of these pieces look the same now.
 
Any type of embellishment can be overdone and yes most of them are a fad, when you see Grandma at the grocery store sporting a face full of piercings and tattoos from head to toe, it might have been the fad back in the day but it does not age well. When you review artistic expression over time it is the 1% that contribute new concepts to the art world and the other 99% are only trying to copying what everyone else is doing at the time. The majority of master artists are never truly recognized for their contributions to the art form until after they are planted in the ground, they are usually following their own path which goes against the group think.
 
Mike Johnson said:
Any type of embellishment can be overdone and yes most of them are a fad, when you see Grandma at the grocery store sporting a face full of piercings and tattoos from head to toe, it might have been the fad back in the day but it does not age well. When you review artistic expression over time it is the 1% that contribute new concepts to the art world and the other 99% are only trying to copying what everyone else is doing at the time. The majority of master artists are never truly recognized for their contributions to the art form until after they are planted in the ground, they are usually following their own path which goes against the group think.
Click to expand...

the same is true of much segmenting and turning in general. How many bowls look just like the last and the one to follow? I try very hard to make things with function and things out of the ordinary.
 
I may be mistaken, but I believe one of those who died from fractal burning in the last couple years was an electrician. Alex Lowe was one of the most accomplished and safety oriented high mountaineers. He still died on a mountain. Knowledge of the medium doesn't guarantee safety.
 
Mike Johnson said:
I would rather die on a mountain than sit in an old folks home filling a pair of depends each day.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting point of view, but it implies that you died making a mistake. I have done a lot of different things, but loading up Depends is still on my bucket list of things to "do".
 
Quality or Quantity, the American Indians would go on the long walk each year, which was a pretty good motivational tool, if you made it back you were usually ready to take on another year of tribal life, if you didn't make it back the wolves or bears took care of your funeral arrangements.
 
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