Roughing and straightening

I'm working on 4 rods two piece/one tip rods right now. At 12 strips per rod - I had a lot of rough planing and straightening to do.

Rough planing


Nodes in need of straightening.


Heating the strip to make it more pliable.

30 seconds in the vise and its straight.

Fir Bark Grip

I was down at my sister's farm last week and noticed a massive fallen fir tree. I had seen a fir grip before so I grabbed a nice chunk of bark off the tree - cut it to a size small enough to fit on my lathe and started turning.


The chunk



I turned the whole thing between centers into a cylinder. Not surprisingly - the lathe was pretty unstable with this huge chunk turining. It probably isn't the safest way to do this - but I don't have a band or table saw - so I just took it straight to the lathe.



After I got it shaped into a cylinder - I put it into a 4 jaw chuck and started shaping it into a grip. Then drilled a 1/4" hole and put it on a mandrel.



Here are some of the fissures and craters further turning revealed. I tried to fill these with epoxy - mixed with bark dust - but wasn't totally happy with the result. It looked kind of shiny in the spots that had been filled. After that I tried to fill with wood filler - but as you can see on the finished grip below - the filler stands out.







This also has a coat of tru-oil on it to make the colors a litle richer. I'm thinking I'll go back to filling with epoxy on my next attempt. I guess I could also just varnish the whole grip and fill in the gaps that way - but then it will lose the cork feel.