Segmented platters still considered a no-no?

[Justin Stephen]

By "segmented" I mean true segmented ring construction, not laminated glue-ups, either on a solid base or a floating base. In particular, I am interested in platters about 18-20" wide and 2-3" tall. I know Malcolm Tibbetts used to (as in, in his book) advise against them due to, as I recall, wood movement issues being more likely to cause cracking/separation.

Has anyone attempted these and found there to be issues?

 

[john lucas]

Well I've done several experiments with pie shaped segments turned into a more or less flat or slightly concave object. These were just tests and I made them into clocks. Everyone of them seperated somewhere over about a 3 year period. At first I thought I had succeeded. I made them thin and slightly concave so they could warp a little as they changed seasonally. I glued them into a groove to be free floating for wood movement and used a flexible adhesive on the edges. I used yellow glue to glue the segments together. I thought I had outsmarted the system. It looked that way for the first year. Then 3 of them cracked. I thought well I'm doing good at about 50 percent. However a few years later I looked again and the other 3 cracked also.
I made platters many many years ago by gluing odd shaped square and rectangular blocks together in any pattern to form a piece big enough to turn a platter. They were all given away or sold and I've never seen any of them so I don't know if they survived.

 

[hockenbery]

Wood moves. Malcom is a student of wood movement and he wants his pieces to last a long time.

Consider other ways to create your design.

corian. It is dusty to turn but it can be cut and joined similar to wood.
Stable and does not move.
@Andy Chen has done some excellent corian segmented pieces. He's probably at swat this weekend.

Turn your platter from solid wood and put your design in the solid wood with carving and color.
Sort of faux segmentation.

Al

 

[Justin Stephen]

Thanks all, that's what I was afraid of.

Al, if you look at my work, I already make lots of platters from solid wood and add quite a bit of design and color to them. There are just some species I wouldn't mind using that are sometimes difficult to get in the sizes that I want (8/4, at least 7" wide).

 

[john lucas]

Another thing I tried that failed was to put an epoxy or Inlace piece on the outside of a platter. I thought it would look nice. turn a groove in the outside of the rim, fill it with epoxy and then turn it away when your done leaving just the epoxy. I even left a shallow groove in the rim so if the wood moved the epoxy would still have a place to hang onto. Seemed to work fine for a year two and then there was some seperation over about 4". I watched it for the next few years and kept it to show people about wood movement problems when I demoed. It eventually fell completely off.
I have had some success putting segmented rings onto a groove on the face of a platter. I use special tool I designed to make tapered sides in the groove I put in the platter. The I use the same tool to make a tapered sided ring to fit into that groove. Think how a Morse taper works. Now when the wood shrinks the segmented ring rises slightly. When it expands the ring seems to stay flush with the surface. I've made lots of mirrors this way but in 51/2" wide you don't have a lot of wood movement. I have done some platters but again they were either sold or given away. Haven't heard of any failures but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

 

[hockenbery]

Thanks all, that's what I was afraid of.

Al, if you look at my work, I already make lots of platters from solid wood and add quite a bit of design and color to them. There are just some species I wouldn't mind using that are sometimes difficult to get in the sizes that I want (8/4, at least 7" wide).

I have seen a few of your platters with the excelent beaded rim detail.
I was thinking more in terms of creating an illusion of segments in a solid wood plater.
That won't help you use a particular species.
Good luck

 

[john lucas]

Yes the beaded rim platters are excellent. I may borrow that idea and do a beaded ring on one of my mirrors just to try out that technique. Harvey Meyer gets everyone excited with this technique.

 

[hockenbery]

Yes the beaded rim platters are excellent. I may borrow that idea and do a beaded ring on one of my mirrors just to try out that technique. Harvey Meyer gets everyone excited with this technique.

@Harvey Meyer does spectacular work. He will be doing demos in Kansas City!

A platter turned from glued up strips with the bowl the size of the widest strip and beaded everywhere else would be a way make a 15" platter from 5" wide boards make the bowl 4.9" wide. The rim 5" wide.

 

[billooms]

Wood expansion hasn't changed. At the last AAW symposium, Curt Theobald talked about the problem in one of his sessions and concluded that there is no safe way of making a segmented platter.

 

[john lucas]

Well there is. Just put all the boards side grain to side grain with the grain running parallel. That could be considered segmented maybe. The other option would be cutting and gluing the wood like a cutting board. Segmented rings however are a problem.

 

[Bill Boehme]

I have had success with Inlase on stable wood like mesquite. Keeping the piece in an air conditioned environment where the relative humidity doesn't vary much also helps. It might be that epoxy is more brittle than Inlace resin.

 

[Justin Stephen]

@Harvey Meyer does spectacular work. He will be doing demos in Kansas City!

Yup, it was watching one of Harvey's demos (on Youtube) that inspired me to try and use this technique in the first place. It is one thing to intellectually understand how it is done (it is, after all, not an especially complicated technique), but to see someone who has mastered it actually do it while explaining everything is quite another. This was about the sixth different technique I had played around with for making embellished rim platters, but it is the one that has stuck with me.

A platter turned from glued up strips with the bowl the size of the widest strip and beaded everywhere else would be a way make a 15" platter from 5" wide boards make the bowl 4.9" wide. The rim 5" wide.

I am a big believer in the rim being about 1/3 the radius personally, so I would need a 10" board and two 2 1/2" boards to do that. Up until now, I have been just using three equal width pieces and trying to line them up so that the seams within the bowl look as natural and unobtrusive as possible. My latest two pieces (one of which will be buffed tomorrow hopefully) are 18" jatoba glue-ups starting from boards of about 6" wide.

 

[Justin Stephen]

Wood expansion hasn't changed. At the last AAW symposium, Curt Theobald talked about the problem in one of his sessions and concluded that there is no safe way of making a segmented platter.

Hard to argue with that authority, thanks.

It does make me wonder about the collaborative work of Marilyn Endres and Eucled Moore. Their pieces are spectacular and look like they probably sell for some serious $$, but their platters (which are 22"-29") are all segmented.

 

[john lucas]

Wow I looked up their work. Incredible. http://www.kazistudio.com/ The big platters appear to be all segmented. I wonder how they keep them together. I have played with layering segments like plywood. That worked for the bottoms of several pieces. Only the top and bottom of those layers are pie shaped segments. The inside is just several layers glued with the grain running perpendicular. the top and bottom were about 1/4" thick so I could turn into it a little ways. but not far or I cut into the "plywood" layers.