Elm and Aluminium Hollow Form

I haven't made it out to the lathe for a good few days, the day job, family, and a fine test match performance by the England cricket team have kept me away!! Lukily(for my turning) today has been a very wet Tuesday in Norfolk and I found myself with an afternoon of no distractions in the shed, just me, a coffee, loud music and shavings!

I started out to make a small Elm hollow form which I wanted to carve and embellish to fit with my current series, but my plans for this were scuppered by finding an internal(to the blank) knot with holes and cracks........ Time for plan B!

I have been collecting up some of the shavings from the aluminium I have been using in recent work to use for something such as this. I turned the shape for the form and filled the holes with the aluminium shavings, packing them in as tightly as possible and soaking them with superglue. A quick sand with some 80 grit paper makes light work of bringing the surface of the aluminium into line with the rest of the form. After hollowing and sanding to a final finish, several coats of oil have been applied, allowed to soak in and buffed to bring the Elm up nice and dark and bring out those rich colours in the grain. A small amount of silver gilt cream has been rubbed into the surface to give a hint of silver in the open grain and a flush fit lid with an aluminium finial to tie in with the filler job and gilt cream. The form is 5" wide and was hollowed with the Keltons, which I am still massively impressed with!

I'm hoping to get some more turning time tomorrow, I have another piece in the 'dark' series under way and a few more ideas of things I want to try out!