Questions about a piece of crotch willow...

Willow's worth turning, though it might seem it's not initially. It'll be fuzzy and uncooperative when wet, improve vastly when dry. See Darrell's site for a look at crotch cuts.

Hello Toller,

Answer to your first question, willow is not a very spectacular wood to turn. It is a bit soft and stringy; however, a crotch piece such as you have may produce some nice grain patterns making it worthwhile to turn.

Depending upon the size of your lathe, assuming at least a 14 or 16 inch swing, the best bet would be to split it one the pith of the large piece and hopefully through the pith of the two branches. Then take out a circle centered on the crotch if possible. If would be good if you could at least get it split to get rid of the pith, but it would be best to split it and then rough turn it as far as preservation goes.

That is what sons are for--to help out ol' dad when he becomes stove up for some reason. Get him to cut it for you.

Hope this helps.

Fred Holder

Split it with wedges? I was thinking I was going to have to saw it in half as crotches tend not to split very well.

Sorry Toller,

I don't split turning wood with wedges, I use a chain saw. I should have said saw it to remove the pith. A poor choice of words on my part.

Fred Holder

Well, I cut the crotch in half and made one side into a bowl blank. Sadly it is rather smaller than I intended due to a wimpy bandsaw, an inability to read a ruler, and somehow getting it on the lathe cockeyed; but I have a lovely 8" diameter rough cut bowl.

Only the end grain came out fuzzy, so I don't see that leaving it fuzzy makes much sense; though maybe the condition will be more widespread when it is dry. The colors are great; going from nearly to black to nearly white, all swirled together.

Tomorrow I will try to tackle the other half. Hopefully I learned something from the first half. Thanks.

Did you get wet? The first piece of willow I ever turned spat at me and left a mark on the wall behind it. ;-)

The grain spacing was wild ... about 1/2" between annual rings!

Yours sounds like it might be spalted. If so, would you post a pic on abpw when you get done and drop us a line to let us know it's there? I'm probably not the only one who'd like to see the final result.

Bill

Very wet experience

My ISP doesn't do abpw, but the rough bowls are at

soft that the tearout is unavoidable?

Bill

It seemed to be; no matter what I did it tore. I am hoping it will behave differently when dry. It is ususally worse when dry, but maybe willow is different.

Have you considered a drench with thin CA?

I buy (and sell) thin CA by the pint for this precise use. It soaks into the punky parts and leaves them hard enough to work. (Allow a few hours for the interior stuff to set up.) If finishing with gloss poly, it seems invisible. Also good for stiffening up thin-walled sections.

Just a thought ... that larger vessel looks promising.

Bill

I didn't know you could do that. It doesn't get too hard?

Willow and the whole family of cottonwoods and true poplars has very soft interlocked fiber. Turns much better when it's dry, because it stays to be cut rather than presses down, bends up or tears. Don't hack at it to "make the shavings fly," cut it in thin shavings with broad bevel support so they slide out of the way. Since it is so soft you can get heel bruises even on the dry wood, another reason not to press, pry and dig with the tool. Even setting up with water will leave you some sanding to remove the compressed areas. Of course that's easier on soft, even textured wood like willow, so there's some silver there.

It also sucks water like a sponge. It'll do the same with CA, so you've been warned. Unless you want stained areas, don't spread it.

Hard as woodpecker lips. Like George said, too, an uneven application will tend to look blotchy. I find that using polyurethane for my finish coat tends to conceal the CA -- probably because the poly is also absorbed into the wood. But that's just a guess. I DO know that a straight oil finish (no varnish) looks pretty bad but I have gotten good results with poly over CA on a number of items.

Hmm ... might even just keep turning until it's fully roughed in and then fill the voids with Inlace (which I do NOT sell) or epoxy with a metal powder added.

When you look at things from the perspective of "how do I take advantage of this situation" ... doors start to open.

Bill

Hi Toller, sorry for rolling into this thread so late, but I've been busy.

I have turned some willow with good success, but mind you not all willow is the same, however I would in a blunt kind of way say that your turning skill does need some improvement ;-*)))

Yes willow is soft, but it hangs together pretty good, you do need to approach the wood more careful than most harder woods, CUT from small to large on the outside, a conventional ground bowl gouge would CUT better IMO, a spindle gouge if used correctly could be used also, also you could try the thinned white glue and water approach, it would stiffen the fibers and harden the wood some.

Submerge the wood in a water/glue soup for a day or two then drip or towel dry, place in a brown paper bag and let dry, after which you can carefully finish turn, the glue will penetrate only a little ways though, so keep that in mind if you do this.

Here's a l>

I won't disagree with you there, but this is just the rough cut; I will have a chance to clean it up once it is dry. The wood towards the center was much more subject to tear out than the rest. you will note that the small bowl, and the bottom of the large bowl are okay. I didn't get my cut in the right place, so the top of the big bowl is the center of the log.