My pick for TOTW this week is Tom Kamila's "Black Ice"......Outstanding!
What kind of wood is this ..... and what was used to blacken it?
What kind of wood is this ..... and what was used to blacken it?
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Congratulations to Tom Kamila for "Black Ice" being selected as Turning of the Week for March 24, 2025 (click here for details) -
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Turning of the Week, March 24, 2025
- Thread starter Odie
- Start date
Great selection, Odie. This piece is original and striking!
Great choice Odie!
Tom, great piece, I would like to know the process of making and finishing if you would share. If not I understand.
Tom, great piece, I would like to know the process of making and finishing if you would share. If not I understand.
Outstanding piece Tom! Thanks for choosing it Odie. Yes, I would sure like to know more details too 
Tom Gall
TOTW Team
Love it, Tom ... congratulations! I too would like to know which choice of methods you used to turn the curved sides. Good choice, Odie! This most likely would have been my TOTW choice next week ... but, not now! 
Awesome piece!
I Have to admit I'm puzzled by the "stave segmented" part of it. The grain matches so well, it's sort of hard to imagine there's a seam down that near corner...
I Have to admit I'm puzzled by the "stave segmented" part of it. The grain matches so well, it's sort of hard to imagine there's a seam down that near corner...
Odie thank you and all of you for your kind and encouraging words and the honor of being picked TOTW.
Before I delve into what I call "Turned Stave Segment Forms", that I spent the last year developing after being inspired by Hideaki Miyamura a Japanese ceramist living in New Hampshire. I received a catalogue from the Pucker Gallery on Newbury St Boston and he was the featured artist. The piece that inspired me is attached below. When seeing it thought it would be great if we could do forms like that as woodturners. I let the thought go as wishful thinking. About two weeks later I was standing in my shop just looking around and it hit me out of the blue, "We Can Do That!" Now I have recently found out about Lowell Converse's Lost Wood Process:
We both end up with similar results using the same geometric principals but very different techniques. I spoke with him on the WOW website and he said: "that after over 20 years I have not seen anyone try my process. Now they have your process to deal with. Good times!" Lowe seems like a great guy and has documented his technique. I hope to meet him in person some day.
Let's keep this reply to the segmenting technique and I'll do a second reply on the finish.
Look at the second pic below. What I do is from an oak log I turn a large closed form. From that turning after drying it, I remove pie sections and reassemble them into the form you see to the right of it. Easy peasy right! Well I cut down two oak trees and turned about thirty pieces before I began to develop a reliable technique for doing this. Trust me the devil is in the details. I turned another thirty to get to what you see in our gallery here on our AAW website. Looking at the pic you can see why I call this technique "Turned Stave". The staves are turned before being assembled into a segmented form.
Before I delve into what I call "Turned Stave Segment Forms", that I spent the last year developing after being inspired by Hideaki Miyamura a Japanese ceramist living in New Hampshire. I received a catalogue from the Pucker Gallery on Newbury St Boston and he was the featured artist. The piece that inspired me is attached below. When seeing it thought it would be great if we could do forms like that as woodturners. I let the thought go as wishful thinking. About two weeks later I was standing in my shop just looking around and it hit me out of the blue, "We Can Do That!" Now I have recently found out about Lowell Converse's Lost Wood Process:
We both end up with similar results using the same geometric principals but very different techniques. I spoke with him on the WOW website and he said: "that after over 20 years I have not seen anyone try my process. Now they have your process to deal with. Good times!" Lowe seems like a great guy and has documented his technique. I hope to meet him in person some day.
Let's keep this reply to the segmenting technique and I'll do a second reply on the finish.
Look at the second pic below. What I do is from an oak log I turn a large closed form. From that turning after drying it, I remove pie sections and reassemble them into the form you see to the right of it. Easy peasy right! Well I cut down two oak trees and turned about thirty pieces before I began to develop a reliable technique for doing this. Trust me the devil is in the details. I turned another thirty to get to what you see in our gallery here on our AAW website. Looking at the pic you can see why I call this technique "Turned Stave". The staves are turned before being assembled into a segmented form.
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Wow, very cool, and amazing that you had that vision, then found a way to pull it off. Hat's off, sir.
Have you considered writing up your process? It would make a great article for American Woodturner.
Have you considered writing up your process? It would make a great article for American Woodturner.
It's percolating in my head. I was a Vocational teacher with a carpentry approval for twenty three years. The problem is I had to invent so many techniques with proprietary jigs and layout that it might be difficult for many to grasp. As a teacher we had to break down any new competency into relatable and digestible tasks to be practiced and learned. We did it all the time. I haven't figured out a teaching-learning plan yet. For example I ended up using a parametric cad program to help anticipate the outcome of dissecting a large diameter turning into a smaller diameter form. Because I had this program available to use doesn't mean it it's the only way to solve this problem. I haven't figured out a simpler method of doing the same thing yet. The solution needs to be available to the average turner. I have ideas but they haven't passed the proof of concept test yet. That's just one of many examples. Teaching this has always been on my mind while developing this technique. Every time I created a doable solution to the problem at hand I would think "That isn't going to be easy to teach!
Teaching this technique at this time seems a little daunting but I'll get there, I'm working on it!
Thirty five years ago Ray Allen https://segmentedwoodturners.org/ray-allen-biography/ had to figure out how to create complex segmented forms without the computer programs available to us today. Take a look at his work below it was and is amazing!
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I’m curious as to how you made those pictured cuts!! It then looks like they need to be recut into staves; cutting staves out of radii blanks sounds like a jig I want to look at!! Seeing a turned vessel cut leaving what you have pictured is a second jig I want to see! Very novel, very intriguing!! Then end results are terrific! Congrats on POW and nice choice Odie!!
I was looking at how one might go about setting up to cut into a large hollow form like that, and cutting the turned staves to fit with each other. My brain keeps thinking of possible ways to do it, but along with those thoughts come the many more ways of how it could fail.
Darryl the first rule is get real comfortable with screwing up! The second rule is get comfortable with wasting wood. The third rule is get comfortable with wasting time. The most important rule is GO FOR IT!
Russ the pieces are cut from the larger turning geometrically correct for assembling into the final piece. They only need cleanup to fit together.
On how many corners does the grain match so well? 'A nice piece indeed.
Tim
Tim