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How to turn Norfolk Island pine

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4mikee

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N.W. Alabama
I have acquired a couple of 10-14 inch x 48 inch Norfolk Island pine logs. Having never turned the wood I’m not sure what to expect and given the cost I’d rather have a little ammo going in. Can anyone tell me if there’s any difference in it and other woods when turning and finishing. I would imagine most will be hollow forms although some may be open forms and I’ll probably shoot for green start to finish if it’s stable enough.
Thanks in advance
 
Turning N.I.P.

If it got knocked down in a storm and is very green, being pine, it has tons of sap. Spalting is not always desired, depending on the type of turning. I have old dry NIP and have to use very high speed to get clean cuts. I guess the "in" thing is still to turn very thin and emphasize the trail of the branch back towards the pith. Can make all types of outstanding turnings with NIP, bowls, vases, HFs, etc. Would suggest practicing on scraps to develop a feel for NIP. Keep turning and learning!😀
 
Nothing particularly tricky in turning NIP. Most commonly turned endgrain, but side gain turnings can be very nice as well. It will move a little as it drys, but it's not that bad.

Hard to offer specific advise without knowing the history of the wood.

NIP is not a pine (despite the name) and you won't find any pitch or resinous sap in the wood. The layer between the bark and wood (phloem?) is loaded with a white / pinkish thick epoxy like sap that will ooze out of fresh cut wood for about week after the tree is taken down. After a week or two the sap is no longer an issue. If you turn fresh cut wood (within a day or two of cutting) you can expect to get hosed down with a watery spray as you turn.

Most turners in my area prefer spalted NIP and will leave fresh cut wood outside until the layer between the bark and wood turns into a soft black mush and the bark easily peels away. It should be moderately spalted with no punky wood at that point. Spalted areas are much less translucent than non-spalted areas in thin turnings. Too much spalting will lead to punky wood with all the associated problems.

Unspalted NIP is not very remarkable, but it makes a nice plain palette for other types of embellishment (carving, burning, coloring,...).

Thin translucent open forms generally involve oil soaking as part of the finishing.

Really dry NIP is not a lot of fun to turn. The really dry stuff generally get shipped up north to people who don't know any better. 🙂

Ed
 
Turn it thin and soak in oil - gives a translucent finish.

http://www.hawaiiwoodturning.com/

Chris Allen in Hawaii also turns the stuff - do a google. He has a method of increasing the intensity of the pink and green stripes in it IIRC.

PS, yeah, you can green turn to finish taking the normal precautions; it's pretty stable
 
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One of the feature of NIP is that the limbs usually grow at the same height.

If you want to show the rings of knots in the top of the hollow form you need to remember the knots will slant downward when the log is stood on end as the tree grew.

If you will have a domed top in your hollow form you have to mount the log so that the top of the tree side is in the bottom of the form and the bottom of the tree side is your top.

You will need to mount it between centers with the knots in the same plane. as you begin roughing you will need to manipulate to line the knots up.

have fun,
Al
 
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Radial branching is one of the features of most open-grown conifers, not just NIP. Tamarack, spruce and fir all show the same hereabout. Only when one side's shaded and the other in the sun do you start to develop inequality in the size of the branch stumps. The shady side die early and leave narrow knots, while the sunny side grows long and thick to take advantage.
 
Thanks for the information. . Can you elaborate on the soaking method and how thin is thin. I'll give them a try soon
Thanks again.
 
Mike - In my experience, if you want an open piece that will have a nice translucent glowing look to it in just about any light you will want to turn to 1/16" - 1/8". At 1/4" you'll have some transparency with the piece held up to a bright light. Heavily spalted areas will be much less translucent at any thickness.

I soak all my nip pieces in a tub that I initially filled (2 years ago) with 50/50 BLO and mineral spirits. I top it off periodically with BLO or mineral spirits depending on what I think it needs (no science to this). I let the pieces soak until they sink (at least a day, but I've left some in for as much as a week).

When I pull the piece out of the tub I let it drip dry on a rack over the tub for about 15 minutes. Then I wipe all the oil off and I let the piece sit out on my drying table (aka kitchen table) in the air conditioned house until it dries (a couple days to a week depending on thickness). It will lose transparency and a lot of the color the oil developed over this period.

I then finish with wipe on poly. The poly brings back the color and translucence.

Unspalted NIP will finish to a yellowish blonde color with any included knots a bright red. Spalted NIP will have a lot or orange wood with streaks of black, blue and green (looks like tortoise shell to me) and a slightly darker red knot. Heavily spalted NIP can be almost entirely black. I really like this look, but not everybody does.

There are a lot of variations on this process, but this works for me.

Ed
 
James McClure said:
OK. I'll bite. If NIP is not a pine, then what is it? Just another deciduous conifer?
Click to expand...

Araucaria heterophylla (synonym A. excelsa) is a distinctive conifer, a member of the ancient and now disjointly distributed family Araucariaceae. As its vernacular name Norfolk Island Pine implies, the tree is endemic to Norfolk Island, a small island in the Pacific Ocean between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. Despite its name, however, it is not a pine. The genus Araucaria occurs across the South Pacific, especially concentrated in New Caledonia (about 700 km due north of Norfolk Island) where 13 closely related and similar-appearing species are found.

Gotta love Wikipedia.
 

When turning NIP end grain, it’s almost impossible to avoid tear-out with any kind of bowl gouge or scraper. One of our pros on the island showed me that a ¾†plus spindle gouge with a bevel of about 42 to 43 degrees and using just about 1/8†of the bevel with a light finish cut (drop the handle) will leave it baby-bottom smooth. Also note that any of the knots will almost immediately dull the tool and you will need to spend some time at the grinder when turning NIP any time you make a pass over the knots.
I have a one inch spindle gouge dedicated only for that purpose.
 
Mikee,
I wanted to also give you some input on the finish but we had some un-expected guests for about a week after the airline meltdown in Hawaii. They needed a place to stay until arrangements could be made to fly back to the mainland. Their friends were very sympathetic, having to spend and extra week trapped in Hawaii.

We have a large number of turners here that turn a great amount of NIP and almost all are end grain so translucence can be achieved. You should shoot for about a 1/8” wall thickness. It’s a little tricky on the inside since the same problems with tear-out on the outside exist on the inside. Most use a combination of tools. A shallow gouge on the upper portion and then change to a ring or hook tool as they go deeper into the bowl. Leave enough thickness for sanding! Also, most completely finish the outside anding to 320 before touching the inside. A bowl steady is pretty much required.

The finished bowl is then submerged in a oil, poly mix (everybody has their own secret recipe but a third each of BLO, Gloss Polyurethane and thinner works just fine.) If you are doing just one or two bowls, it would be very pricy to create a couple of gallons of this mix so you might have to substitute repeated wipings of Danish Oil.

The piece is wiped with paper towels and then allowed to dry for about a day. The bowl is then buffed with tripoli back to the wood, a white diamond buff picks up the residue and the piece is coated again. This is repeated until there are no dull spots left on the piece, indicating the fibers are saturated. Expect three to five rounds of treatment. The bowl is then buffed through the compounds with care and attention to the last white diamond buff and then coated with wax, usually carnauba. This should last for years other than dusting with a soft cloth. DO NOT OIL. If it ever becomes dull, a new buff with white diamond and a new coat of wax should bring it back as good as new.

I attached a bowl I finished a couple of months ago. About 11" W X 6" H
 

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