I wager there is no woodturner alive today or in history who has turned a perfect piece every time. We all will have myriad stories of the disasters, screw-ups or just plain mistakes.
Such ‘events’ can occur in many ways: splits in the wood suddenly breaking away and landing somewhere in the shed, a lapse of concentration when the turner allows the guage or chisel to dig in just a little (a millimetre or two) and the piece shatters, a slight mis-alignment of the chisel and the wood creates a massive guage (commonly called a ‘catch’ and so on.
So what do we do about them. In the worst case a very nice piece of wood becomes high-class firewood. But, in other cases a simple re-design of the piece is sufficient or, a piece can be glued back together..
In this section I want to show some of my disasters and what I could or could not do about them.
A Split Dish
This was intended to be a shallow dish made from Yellow Box but a split in the wood ‘disengaged’ and took flight. The left hand picture shows a close-up where the split occurred – a very fine line but enough to screw-up. The centre picture shows the entire dish and where the split occurred and the right hand picture is the ‘after’ shot when the dish was finished. All that was required was a simple glue job. Not a bad result even if I do say myself.
A Minor Disaster – February 2020
Oh, so close! Within seconds of finishing polishing this 25cm bowl – made from Lemon Scented Gum (Corymbia Citriodora) – it disengaged from the chuck jaws, hit something and broke with a very large bang, hit me in the stomach and a sharp edge sliced my left index finger. Damage? I had the lathe spinning at 2100 rpm so the result was not going to be pretty. A very sore stomach (a very large purple bruise developed over following days), a deep 3cm gash on my finger exposing the tendon and a broken bowl.
A trip in an ambulance to Box Hill Hospital, 1 hour 20 minutes in surgery and I had this huge splint and bandage for a cut finger! The surgeon said that it was to stop me trying to do anything with it.
So, what happened? I poked around the shed and found a small piece of wood that had been part of the spigot (see the middle photo). The spigot is that round protusion on the bottom of the piece that is inserted into the jaws of the chuck to hold it onto the lathe. There are other pieces missing from the spigot.
My best guess is as follows: I was polishing with a polish comprising tung oil and carnuba wax. One of the secrets for a good finish with a wax polish is to apply the polish with a cloth while the lathe is spinning and to apply pressure to generate heat which in turn helps the polish penetrate the wood.
I assume there was a minute split or weakness in the spigot wood and a piece of it gave way under the pressure I was applying. Because the smal piece gave way there was insufficient wood for the jaws to grip so it flew off the lathe and we know the rest…
I believe I can recover the bowl. The split is quite clean and there is another split but only partially across the bowl. There a few pieces missing – they are in the shed – somewhere!
Normally I would simply glue pieces together and fill any gaps with clear epoxy. However, a friends suggested that i look at kintsugi which is a Japanese technique (or art form) for repairing broken ceramic pieces by accenting the joins by gluing with metals such as gold. silver, platinum etc
While I am not likely to use precious metals I can use metallic pigments in epoxy to adapt the process to wood. We will see how it goes…
The Repair Job
After a considerable period of time, about 6 months or so, I finally decided to have a go at repairing the broken bowl. As seen in above section, it was in two large pieces that fitted together fairly well but there were a couple of smaller pieces and gaps where I could not find some pieces.
I obtained some gold glitter from a craft store and mixed it with two part epoxy resin. After smearing the broken edges with the mixed resin I clamped the spigot onto the lathe with the contracting chuck. Where there gaps I fashioned formwork with masking tape and filled the gaps with what wood pieces I did find and with the ‘gold’ resin. When all had set and dried I finished off by sanding and polishing.
It turned out rather well even if I do say so myself.