Here are My Woodturnings!
by Paul Bucca
Boise, ID
Note: click any picture to see a larger version.
I began turning green wood about 13 years ago, however my interests gravitated to segmented bowl construction in the last 9 years. My past life, spent in science as an Oceanographer, led me to appreciate the high degree of accuracy necessary to produce tight segmented joints and seamless marquetry. My key to successful segmented turning lies in the abundance of jigs I have accumulated-possibly more than the number of bowls I have turned. I have found that jigs are essential to producing the repeatability necessary for segmented turning. I have been the owner of a scroll saw for only two years and picked up the art of marquetry only last year.
The construction of this bowl offered me an opportunity to incorporate double bevel marquetry into my turnings resulting in a somewhat unique art form. The concept of incorporating portholes into a turning is attributed to the ingenuity of Malcolm Tibbetts and populating the portholes with animal marquetry is of my doing.
The animals are made of only natural colored woods. Accessing Google Images on my computer provided me with ample animal pictures that I resized and copied to a 1/8" thick base wood (primarily hard maple) in which I inlayed the various colors of the animals and their habitats using a 4.5 degree tilt angle on my scroll saw.
This turning consists of 685 pieces and took approximately 350 hours to complete. The rings above and below the feature ring are composed of 20 segments each. The turning is about 12 inches in diameter and 6.5 inches high and the finish is rubbed tung oil. The turning was assembled in two hemispheres which were mated after I finished the inside. The dark wood that dominates the top and bottom hemispheres of the bowl is primarily granadillo and these rings are composed of 20 segments each. The following woods are also in the turning: ebony, maple, wenge, sapele mahogany, cherry, tigerwood, poplar, yellowheart, purpleheart, guancalo alves, bloodwood, burmese blackwood and red oak. The bottom of the bowl features a rattlesnake containing 64 pieces surrounded by a 12 segment Gaboon ebony ring.
You can email Paul at
pjbucca@msn.com
.
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