[smrjohn]

I have a bunch of maple and walnut shavings I would like to use instead of disposing of them. My thinking was to compress them in a cylinder with some sort of epoxy or wood glue and after they dry turn them into a bowl. Is there an epoxy I could use for this or wood glue?

 

[Dave Paine]

Pen turners will make pen blanks from small pieces of wood perhaps some shavings.

You should search this forum for casting pen blanks. It is very important to remove air pockets. This is done with a pressure pot and either high pressure or vacuum depending on your equipment.

I think the folks who cast use an acryllic resin which is easy to turn.

I would not use wood glue. It will shrink too much, which will cause cracking and it is very brittle and tough on the turning tools.

You will need a lot of volume of resin. Likely going to spend more for resin than a solid wood bowl blank.

 

[ghost5]

What Dave said. Resin is the only real answer to what you want to do. Alumilite is the easiest to get and runs about $1 per ounce. No pressure pot needed but a huge help if you have one. I have been casting resin for 20 years now and have yet to use a pressure pot but that is just me.

For the time and $ to make bowl size blanks I think I would go a different way. IMHO

 

[john lucas]

As expensive as epoxy and acrylic resins are, I would just throw the shavings away. Heck you can find wood all over the place if you look. You can buy a chainsaw for not much more than a gallon of epoxy and hardener would cost and then you can easily harvest more wood.
Now if you want to do it for artistic reasons that's a different can of worms.

 

[smrjohn]

Yeah it was for the effect but I don't want to spend a lot. Thanks for the info.

 

[BassBlaster]

It could be done with PR or Alumilite. Both can be colored to whatever you want. I personally prefer turning Alumilite much better than PR. I would think either one would require pressure to fill all the voids in a pile of shavings. Im limited on my casting knowledge though.

 

[Healeydays]

Casting materials isn't that tough.

Go look up Barre Pinske of VT and look at the stuff he makes with twigs and resin. Simply amazing and he teaches his techniques.

http://www.illanajoffrey.com/twigresin.htm

 

[jdaschel]

Its not hard to do. Here is a video that shows curtis seebeck making a pen blank from shavings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9IErQYSQJT4

Making anything bigger than a pen blank gets tricky.
1- You need a large pressure pot.
2-Do you have enough time before the resin sets?
3-You need a lot of resin.

Casting isn't cheap. I found that one out pretty quick. Unless you are just doing pure resin and pouring Polyester resin outside when it's warm

 

[ghost5]

While I agree with most of what is said about casting a pressure pot is one thing I never used and I cast some big stuff. Here is a pic of a couple of pieces I had in a show. I have one here that is almost 6 feet long, cast in 8 pieces and all without a pressure pot. Some are hollow cast some are solid.

By no means am I says you don't need one or shouldn't use them but there are was to do it without one.