As I gaze around our property looking for likely victims for the lathe, my eyes come to rest on a small holly that seems to be in the final throes of its demise. It has 3 trunks, which I almost cut down this summer. But I will let them stay rooted as long as possible if they are decent turning wood (not fancy, I know, but good for ornaments or something else simple?). What say ye?
forestgirl — you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can’t take the forest out of the girl 😉
Replies
Jamie,
Holly turns beautifully. Mine is a nice, creamy white and smooth like butter. It's one of my favourite turnery woods. My only complaint is the plain colour.
and www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com)
- Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
Forestgirl,
I've turned holly (dried) to make inlay when I needed a white contrast. It's great.
However, I hear it is hard to dry - warps and dries with a blue in it unless carefully dried. So if you turn it green, it may develop that blue color and go wild on you.
Just a theory. I've never actually tried it. Perhaps others can chime in.
Frank
I've been drying (very slowly) mine in log-form (5" round). No blue so far. Some pieces I've cut out have remained white.Chris @ http://www.flairwoodworks.com and http://www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com)
- Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
Frank and Chris -- I've read (a long time ago) that the color change in holly happens when it's cut the wrong time of year. Problem is, I can't remember when the right time of year is. Since this little "tree" is actually 3 trunks, I'll cut one this winter, see what happens. If it changes color, I'll cut another one next spring.
Wet vs. Dry: As I've been told a zillion times, wet wood is wonderful to turn. But after you turn it, then what? It does all squirrely, right? Hah, hah, joke's on me! So whadaI do, find semi-dry wood? Gotta read up on all this stuff.
I do want to make a bunch of the little tops for a friend's store, just easy little treats for the kids. I suppose they can be made from fairly mundane and easy-to-turn wood, since they are decorated.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
FG:
Turning green wood is alot of fun, but as you point out, it does tend to go squirelly. Some turners take advantage of this and turn bowls to finished thickness and let nature take it's course and wind up with all kinds of interesting shapes. Others rough out a bowl, then set it aside to dry for up to a year, then put it back on the lathe and re-turn it to final shape. Drying rough-turned bowls is one of those endlessly debated topics among turners, which I'm sure you have discovered in your research.
If you are turning tops, which I assume you'll want to give away as soon as they're done, I'd suggest getting some pre-dried maple. It's fairly plain, like holly, but If you will be coloring the tops like your previous efforts (very nice, by the way) the grain doesn't really matter.
Dennis
Hmmm. I like green wood because it's easy to turn AND warps. But that probably won't be good for tops. As Dennis suggests, you can rough turn, dry, then turn to completion. Removing a bunch of the waste will hurry along the drying process. Have you not got a bunch of already dry scrap wood to turn tops from?Chris @ http://www.flairwoodworks.com and http://www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com)
- Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
"Have you not got a bunch of already dry scrap wood to turn tops from?" Unfortunately, most of my scraps are 1x material, LOL. However, I cut up a bunch of 2x and 1.5x stuff into 1' lengths for kindling, but haven't given it away yet. It won't be particularly good for finished product, but it'll be good practice. My Christmas trees and tool handles have a long way to go!
I have stuff around in the yard and on our other property that I can use when starting bowls.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Edited 10/1/2009 6:28 pm by forestgirl
Find some contrasting 1" stock and glue it up for some colourful tops!Chris @ http://www.flairwoodworks.com and http://www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com)
- Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
"Find some contrasting 1" stock and glue it up...." Well duh! What didn't I think of that? (please, don't answer that)
Actually, I've got lots of contrasting woods. Aspen, walnut, maple, cherry, oak, madrone.
Here's a question for ya: In small turnings, does it matter if the woods are rather different structually?forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Generally speaking, variances in hardness are not as imprtant as variences in the amount of movement they are subject to. But for small pieces, that may be insignificant. For turning, variances in hardness isn't too big a deal. However, sanding may result in problems. You've probably noticed that when sanding a wood like pine with sharply contrasting early and late wood that you can feel that the darker grain lines are "raised" because they are being abraded less because they are harder. And if you plan to use a chatter tool, you'll probably get deeper marks in the soft wood. For the center lamination, you're probably wise to use a hard wood if it's subject to wear (the point and handle?)Chris @ http://www.flairwoodworks.com and http://www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com)
- Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
Yep, I was thinking more of movement than I was of hard v. soft. But in a small piece, it would be less of an issue.
I dunno about chattering on laminations. Might get a little too "busy" but I could certainly give it a try, doesn't cost much.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
FG,
If you're talking about making tops from glued-up stock, be prepared for some that don't run true. They'll wobble about.
If you were to glue up, say, aspen and cherry - woods with different specific gravity ratings - the cherry will pull the top to one side as it spins because it's heavier. It will make the top unbalanced. This might not be a major issue though if a four-part glue-up balanced the pieces across from one another (cherry across from cherry; aspen across from aspen).
It won't take much to experiment with it, so why not give it a go?
I've found that even some solid wood tops don't spin very true if there is a portion of dense wood from a knot, for instance, in one part of them. That was terrible sentence construction, but you should get the point..
I like making and giving away tops. Once, I made a bunch and went to a large family gathering (my wife is from a family of ten kids). I started fiddling with the tops on the floor, and very soon all the nieces and nephews came over to see what was going on. These are kids from the computer game generation, but they sat around and spun tops and talked laughed and held spinning contests and "top wars" for close to an hour. A very charming scene...and I instantly became that cool uncle who makes the tops.
Zolton If you see a possum running around in here, kill it. It's not a pet. - Jackie Moon
I hear ya on the density affecting how the tops spin. Bonnie was mentioning that very few wooden tops spin really perfectly, because even in a small piece of wood with no knots, the density varies enough to have effect at high speed.
I'm thinking of lamination more for other projects I might do, but if I run out of the right "sticks" for tops, I might try it for fun.
Thanks, Zolton!forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Might try gluing it up to do something bigger, particularly between centers. Back when I was in junior high shop class I did a turned lamp as one of my projects. In ye olde days that meant gluing up a stack of 1x stock and jointing it into a octagonal blank before turning the lamp, on a gap-bed Rockwell. My mother still has that lamp on her sewing table.
One of my classmates decided to turn a bowl for his turning project. I'm pretty sure that this was before bowl gouges had been invented and probably before turning a wet log was anything near mainstream. Anyway, that meant more glued 1x stock. I seem to recall the shop teacher not being too happy about the scraper that he used winding up stuck in the ceiling after it got away from him. :)
Anyway, point being you can leverage your scrap stock and some glue to get some turning time in sooner rather than later.
I haven't checked the forums for quite a while, but, I have a lot of holly - some of it up to 24" wide by 1" and 2" thick (hard to believe, but how I came to acquire it is a long story). I had it kiln-dried, and it turned out pretty well when the stickers and the piles were kept tight. All of it was stickered and clamped in the kiln. As it dries the clamps were tightened (every couple of days in the kiln). Most of it came out pretty well, but one bunch had the clamps come off in the kiln and warped along the heart line.
Holly (I think) is distantly related to pine, but I've found that as it gets older/dryer, it seems to get harder - but maybe just seems more dense, given the decrease in moisture content. The normal pieces are a breeze to turn, but I've found that sometimes (for want of a better description) the wood will get "bruised" if you get chatter, or aren't really careful around knots. Once the brusing happens, I've had a lot of trouble getting it out.
I also have some pieces that are 3.5 to 4 inches square. I recently turned one of them into a stem for a small table and it turned out great. It also really looks neat when it spalts (I stood some pieces on end on the not-so-clean concrete floor of my shop for a while to get this effect.). The spalting puts darker streaks in the normally fairly white wood.
Let us know how your projects turn out.
The person who says it
can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it. - CHINESE
PROVERB
Wow, 24"D holly! That's cool! The biggest holly trunk I've seen here was ~10" or so. It was sad -- I'd been gone from the stable where I ride for a couple days, and when I drove in, I saw this huge pile of wood chips where there used to be a great big holly "bush" -- which in actuality was a few trees all growing very close together. I went over and looked at the stumps and about died.
Interesting that it seems harder after it dries. I don't have anything on our property that's big enough to make into dimensional lumber, just 4-6"D.
Thanks for the info.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
That is one massive holly! Holy holly!Now, holly is a hardwood. Pine is a softwood. I'm not seeing the connection. I haven't worked with old enough holly to experience how hard it gets, but I know that fir gets pretty darn hard. I've bent staples for electrical cables trying to drive them into fir. I needed to predrill for them.Any pictures of spalted holly?Chris @ http://www.flairwoodworks.com and http://www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com)
- Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
I really meant that Holly is considered (by many folks) to be an evergreen - and since most evergreens are considered to be softwoods, hence the relationship. Holly has about the same or slightly harder consistency as teak - it's also usually lumped in with the hardwoods (or an exotic) but it's pretty soft.
Sorry I don't have any pictures right now - I turned a small bowl-like container out of the bigger spalted piece that I had, but I put some of my stuff in an A & C show last week, and someone bought it. I've got some larger chunks standing in the shop, so if one of them turns out to be spalted, I'll take a pic and post it.
I've attached a photo of a table that I made out of one of the top sections. I also sold it, but the buyer didn't have any way to take it with her, so she wanted me to take it back to my house so she could pick it up. The holly slab in the photo was from about 25 or more feet off the ground.
The person who says it
can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it. - CHINESE
PROVERB
Now that is a unique table! Way to make use of the holly. The contrasting base which seems to match the bark edge is nice too. Do you have any shots of the base? Are the arched legs connected to the slab top only at the center, or are there additional braces?I like your story about how the tree came down.Chris @ http://www.flairwoodworks.com and http://www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com)
- Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
The legs are laminated walnut and are flattened at the top, then attached at three places each. The leg that's close to the hole in the center has an additional piece of walnut attached to make up for the difference in thickness of the two sides of the back of the slab.
The person who says it
can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it. - CHINESE
PROVERB
Right after I found the pic of the current table, I found these of a previous tables. The one slab is from just above (or beside) the first one on the tree.
At the risk of going overboard with proects, I've attached some of them.
I like taking a holly table to an A & C show because they're attention-getters, and conversation-starters. Until I got this batch, I'd never seen holly this big, either.
For ForestGirl - I've attached a pic of a faceplate turning that has some slices of wood, including holly. As one of the other posters said, it sometime looks plain, but it looks nice in contract with other species.
The person who says it
can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it. - CHINESE
PROVERB
Very cool stuff, thanks for taking the time to post the pics. I'll be tapping my foot all weekend, waiting for the tools to get here, LOL.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Sorry, I didn't have in thing in the photo for scale, but the wide end is just over 20 inches across! One big-#### Holly.
I bought the pieces of the entire tree from a redneck kid I used to work with. It was growing in his yard, and a limb broke during a windstorm. The historic society in his county brought a tree surgeon over to repair the broken limb but before they could get back, he'd cut it down and had started cutting it up for firewood!
They estimated it was somewhere between 235 and 275 years old! An old guy told me once at a sawmill, that a holly tree that's 12 inches in diameter is about 100 or more years old because they grow so slowly.
The person who says it
can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it. - CHINESE
PROVERB
I'm late to this one, but
I'm late to this one, but maybe I can help. I've turned a lot of holly. I have seen trees in this area (Va. suburbs of D.C.)up to about 90'. The blue stain mentioned is sap. Holly is best cut in the coldest part of winter, when the sap is lowest. That will yield the highest amount of stain free stock. IMO, the blue stain is not particularly attractive.
Holly when turned green can be tough to dry. When drying rough turned bowls, 7-12" in diameter, I can count on losing 35-50% of them. In the past I have always bagged the bowls. Smaller objects will fare somewhat better. I haven't yet had a chance to try alternative drying methods such as dish soap or DNA, so can't comment on the effectiveness of them. I hope to change that in the near future. When roughing out green holly, be sure to leave sufficient wall thickness. This stuff is not well behaved, and will move considerably.
If you have never turned holly before, you're in for a treat. Green logs give up long continuous shavings as if you were turning a chunk of firm wax. And almost as easily.
Jeff
On my computer, a tremendous amount of space in this discussion is repeated "signatures" and "tag lines." One can and should be proud of clever phrases, and we can all use marketing help during this economy, but once per reply, and once per discussion, would reduce the length of discussions which should improve forum response time.
Don, I think the double-signature lines are some kind of glitch in the conversion from Old Knots to New Knots. This thread originated in the old platform.
I have noticed that if you edit the post you will get two signatures as well.... I think...
AZmO
Thanks for the info, Jeff. My holly trees are really pretty small compared to what you're describing. I'd be making smallish items with them for sure. I might cut one of the trees soon and chunk it up. Leave the others along until I have some experience.
in the book 'Understanding
in the book 'Understanding wood' by R.Bruce Hoadley on page 106 it discusses Fluorescence of certain woods under 'black light' Re.Holly..stating it shows a soft bluish to gray.There is a whole list of maybe 25 diff. species with a corresponding list of the color of fluorescence. very cool to display a piece under black lite. rob
I had opportunity to use a holly that had been cut and left. I may have waited too long and it dried with a grayish tinge to the wood.
One piece went to Robin Allen, a well-known crossbow maker for a stock to a crossbow.
I kept various boards from it and found the thickness rather variable as the wood was hard enough to make the blade of the mill dive when making the cut.
It has been drying for one year and I have yet to touch it.
I did take three rounds of a holly and put three relief cuts partway into the outside to relieve stress. The checked a bit but there are some usable pieces.
I think this is a wood that takes to bleaching quite well. I can't remember if you can use oxalic acid to do it however
I think oxalic acid would only take out tannin stains and maybe blue fungus,but for indiscriminate bleaching use a 2 part.Hydrogen peroxide+sodium hydoxide,but it may not take out the tannin stains if there are any.hope this helps. rob
Forest..
NEVER cut a tree
Forest..
NEVER cut a tree unless it's roots getting into your house or sewer pipes!
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