Main Index.

Home.

SHELLAC Shellac is has been used for many hundreds of years and was used by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans for a wide range of applications. It is used in all areas of woodworking to provide a hard workable finish. originally imported from India as Dye known as Lac, in the late 1800s a new process was developed in England using Lac and a resin to produce Shellac this new varnish was then used extensively in French Polishing techniques throughout the furniture industry and soon became more widely used than the hitherto Beeswax polishes and although now superseded by modern cellulose and polyurethane finished it is still often used by the more skilled restoration woodworkers. Two insects have been responsible for the development of wood finishes i.e. the Bee for beeswax and the Laccifer Laca (Lac Beetle) for Shellac and it is the female of both species that provides the wax or Lac. The Lac beetle larvae is about an 1/8th of an inch long and as a parasite attaches itself to young branches of trees and shrubs from which they extract the sap. This sap covers the larvae as a result of the action of secretion glands and after about 8 weeks the insect becomes much larger and covered with a brownish hardened varnish, the encrusted twigs are then harvested dried, washed crushed, and sieved to remove impurities and the end product is known as Shellac Flakes. The Shellac Flakes can be mixed with spirits and when applied to wood as a finish the spirit quickly dissolves to leave a very hard shiny surface finish.
SNOOKER CUES Click Here or for more in depth if you have acrobat reader try HERE
SPHERES A step by step guide to turning a wooden sphere or wooden ball Click Here for info on articles dealing with turning spheres and balls Click Here 
SPINNERS Make a finger Spinner Top
SQUARE TURNING  See this article  http://www.turningwood.com/sqt1.htm

WALKING STICKS Turning a complete walking stick including the handle can be achieved using off centre turning techniques an excellent book dealing with this subject including walking sticks is Multi-Centre Woodturning by Ray Hooper and published by the Guild of Master Craftsman.
Also try this link for more info re Walking Sticks
WHAT IS WOOD ? Before turning or working with wood it is useful to look at the composition of wood as this will have a great significance on the methods used for converting the material into an item. This is especially important to Wood turners as they tend to use a wider variation of wood types than other woodworkers.
As far as I know wood is the only building material capable of regenerating itself, in this age where conservation is becoming more and more important this has got to be a very important fact that we should not loose site of.
As wood is a form of living vegetation it is not surprising to find that it is composed of the following elements  Carbon, Oxygen, and Hydrogen. In addition to Water four groups of compounds are formed from these basic elements as follows.
Cellulose-: This represents almost half of the weight of dry wood and is responsible for the tensile strength, together with Hemicelluloses and Lignin it forms the fibrous construction.
Hemicelluloses-: This is very similar to Cellulose.
Lignin-: This bonds the fibres of wood together giving strength and is one of the basic differences between trees and other softer plants. Lignin is plastic when hot and is the main reason why woods can be steam formed.