WindsorDi's photos

I use smaller, gnarly knots and burls to turn as toppers for bottle stoppers. These stoppers are solid stainless steel - so fine with highly acidic things… wine, vinegars, oils, salts… osage orange, rosewood, espalier pear, espalier pear, juniper, apple, espalier pear

White oak... straight cut, quarter-sawn, and some from old whiskey barrel staves...

top to bottom: elm burl juniper curly maple osage orage All native woods for Ontario

Spalted woods are a wood workers' bonus surprise... you never know when you will encounter those fine black veins. ...spalting is when wood has fallen to the ground… and opposing clans of mushroom families try to claim the wood as their food source… they set up war zones… depositing these fine black lines of spores that stop the opposing gang from claiming any turf. You get these wonderful patterns formed in among the grain of the wood… if you can find and harvest the wood before the mushrooms turn it to soft punk pulp. These are completely inert and sealed at this point… no allergy issues.

somethimes it's fun to go up-scale... a fancy mechanical kit, a bit of gold and sterling silver bling, some "different" body materials to turn... Yes, that 2nd one is really turned from a compressed resin block filled with shredded currency ;-)

A warm, windy and sunny day today... the students have officially decided it's back to gazebo weather! (14 ˚C [57 ˚F] and southern winds gusting 35-50 kmph) ... so oddly warm for Feb 3rd.

It was wonderful to be heading home from the college in daylight! Feb 1st... and the daylight period is visibly lengthening.

I have a *thing* for stairwells... they seduce me and beckon me to wander....

When sunlight is streaming through the window, even industrial concrete-bunker design stairwells look enticing...