Post by Benathema on Apr 11, 2022 2:59:51 GMT -5
Out rockhounding with sister a couple months ago. She mentioned I had the right idea with my rock scoop cause that river does a number on your fingers after a while. I told her I could make her one if she wanted... "okay!"
Found a stick, kind of looks like this years' driftwood, still has bark, not rotten, but sun faded. I cut off some branches and other parts with the saw on my leatherman and stripped what was left of the bark before letting it rattle around in the back of my car for a month.
I then clamped my angle grinder on its side with a 60 grit flap wheel (style points for safety, it was more legit than it sounds) and shaped the ends of the stick and ground off the branch nubs.
I spend a fair bit of time hand sanding this thing, trying to get past the discolored wood. Switched over to a 00 grade steel wool pad for a bit, which was a lot easier to use than trying to hold chunks of sandpaper. There was still some grey wood though. Adds character.
I then burned a vine into it. The spiral along the length, more parallel to the wood grain, was much easier/faster to burn than the swirls. I switched to a pointed cone tip to try to use it like a pencil. Severing the fibers across the grain is hard to do without slipping and having the tip jab the wood. I'm thinking that using a knife to pre-carve the design might make it easier to get the burning tool to follow the intended path.
She's really into malachite, so I planned on a color scheme of black vine on green stick. Sort of a palette swap from a plant vine being colored green like a normal vine would be. If it looks like normal wood, it might get forgotten on the beach. Also, I watched this guy do a Shou Sugi Ban thing with food dye on YouTube, and I've been hooked on "not brown" since my cabinet, I wanted to play. This is a water-based food dye. I was going for a deeper green, but wasn't quite sure how it'd work out. Very vibrant.
Drilled holes and epoxied in the scoop (literally JB weld), and used that to hang it while I applied 3 coats of oil-based polyurethane. I sanded between coats, and after the final coat I went over it with a paper bag. Then glamor shots.
Side by side with my original. That one was thrown together in a day, this was much more involved and thorough. I guess that's what you do when you're making something for someone you care about - put more into it than you would do for yourself.
Will there be a v3 ... ?
Found a stick, kind of looks like this years' driftwood, still has bark, not rotten, but sun faded. I cut off some branches and other parts with the saw on my leatherman and stripped what was left of the bark before letting it rattle around in the back of my car for a month.
I then clamped my angle grinder on its side with a 60 grit flap wheel (style points for safety, it was more legit than it sounds) and shaped the ends of the stick and ground off the branch nubs.
I spend a fair bit of time hand sanding this thing, trying to get past the discolored wood. Switched over to a 00 grade steel wool pad for a bit, which was a lot easier to use than trying to hold chunks of sandpaper. There was still some grey wood though. Adds character.
I then burned a vine into it. The spiral along the length, more parallel to the wood grain, was much easier/faster to burn than the swirls. I switched to a pointed cone tip to try to use it like a pencil. Severing the fibers across the grain is hard to do without slipping and having the tip jab the wood. I'm thinking that using a knife to pre-carve the design might make it easier to get the burning tool to follow the intended path.
She's really into malachite, so I planned on a color scheme of black vine on green stick. Sort of a palette swap from a plant vine being colored green like a normal vine would be. If it looks like normal wood, it might get forgotten on the beach. Also, I watched this guy do a Shou Sugi Ban thing with food dye on YouTube, and I've been hooked on "not brown" since my cabinet, I wanted to play. This is a water-based food dye. I was going for a deeper green, but wasn't quite sure how it'd work out. Very vibrant.
Drilled holes and epoxied in the scoop (literally JB weld), and used that to hang it while I applied 3 coats of oil-based polyurethane. I sanded between coats, and after the final coat I went over it with a paper bag. Then glamor shots.
Side by side with my original. That one was thrown together in a day, this was much more involved and thorough. I guess that's what you do when you're making something for someone you care about - put more into it than you would do for yourself.
Will there be a v3 ... ?
X - Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's rocks
- O Henry