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Glue for wide crack

I have a piece of Yew on the lathe which I am turning to form a natural edge bowl. The bowl will be far from a regular shape, verging towards the "Angel Wings" that Darrell posted about a while back. Trouble is, one of the "wings" has a wide radial crack (up to half-inch) where a bark inclusion has decayed. I could throw the piece on the fire, but the figuring is really good and I would like to try to complete it.

I have rough turned the outside and soaked the remains of the decaying bark inclusion with thin CA glue, but I am at a loss as to how to full the bulk of the crack. I wouldn't mind if I didn't fill it at all, but I am worried that the piece will fly apart when I start hollowing out the inside. On a more "round" bowl, I would wrap tape around the outside to strengthen it while hollowing, but being the shape that it is, the tape would simply form a straight line between the wings and be cut by the gouge.

My initial thought was to use a 2-part epoxy ("Araldite" in UK) and mix with kids powder paints or similar to try to match the colour of the bark inclusion. Other thoughts included using a thick CA mixed with ground up pieces of bark, but I don't have any experience on how large thicknesses of either of these glues will behave. In particular, will the heat generated by the epoxy damage the bowl, and do large thicknesses of CA have to be built up in layers to allow it to cure?

Any thoughts on the above would be gratefully received.

-- Richard Hatton Hertfordshire, UK

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Reply to
Richard Hatton
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Take some of the bark and stuff it into the crack. If you can, use big pieces. If not, crush and pack. Then use the medium CA to hold it in place. If you orient the bark correctly, it'll look natural. You can bridge 10mm easily with this method. Let the CA cure on its own so you don't cloud it.

Only problem is you'll have to use some sort of a surface finish to hide the shiny stuff between the bark layers.

Reply to
George

Stitch it with some silver thread. Have seen this done and it looks kinda cool.

rik

Reply to
RikC

If you haven't done any turning in the inside, I'd be wary of trying to do any filling in the crack. Once you do turn the inside after filling, the wood will move some more--will the fill material go along with that movement? Is the crack less than half the diameter of the blank? If so, I wouldn't worry too much about it flying apart and would carefully rough-hollow out the blank to a thickness of about 10 percent of the diameter and let it stabilize before filling the crack and finish-turning.

My two cents worth--

Ken Grunke Rural La Farge, WI

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Reply to
Ken Grunke

I just sold the worst piece of junk bowl I've ever turned (and that's saying something, believe me!) even before the crack happened this past weekend where I "stitched" a very large crack from rim to middle of the base with some thin white leather.

The crack was easily 1/4" - 3/8" wide that formed at a previous crafts show where a freak rainstorm came along and filled the bowl with water faster than I could get it under cover. That night it popped wide open. If it hadn't been one of my first bowls I had ever done I would have just thrown it in the fire. Instead, I stitched it up to see what kind of response it would get and just generally be a reminder for myself of where my turning had started. Been carrying it around for some time now and amazingly it sold.

You just never know.

- Andrew

Reply to
AHilton

i've used and have good success with the west system epoxy --- it is primarily used for boat-repair and therefore is flexible. you can color it with the graphite they sell or with other pigments.

Reply to
noa

Thanks to all of you for your responses.

Ken, I have not yet hollowed it out and the crack goes right down to the centre of my chuck mounting spigot. Hence why I am concerned about it flying apart. Perhaps I will do as you suggest, but just very slowly.

I would still like to try and tape it up and I thought about using some form of packing or such to keep the tape clear of the hollowing process. Thinking about what this could be, the answer I suppose is to use 2 semi-circles of timber across the "wings", taped in place and then wrap around these. But writing this got me thinking. Taking it one stage further, I could turn a scrap circle of wood with a hole in it just less than the maximum diameter of my bowl and tap this over the outside. If the inside of the "donut" is shaped to fit the bowl, it may be quite a good jamb fit. Has anybody tried this? Perhaps I'll just give it a go and let you know (but my day job is getting busy right now and it might have to wait until I'm back from holidays).

Thanks again. It's great to have a group like this to swap ideas.

-- Richard Hatton Hertfordshire, UK

(remove "nojunk" from address if responding by email)

Reply to
Richard Hatton

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