At the 9 July 2022 Hiawatha Woodturners Club meeting Sam Staffan demonstrated Fractal Burning. Sam ran a sign shop before retiring and used a transformer used in neon signs to generate the high voltage needed for fractal burning of wood. Sam has a sign on his transformer to the effect that this will kill you to remind himself of the danger of working with up to 15,000 volts even in low current, In this video Sam will explain how he mixes one table spoon of baking soda to one quart of water and then sprays the surface of the wood and then applies the probes to pass the current across the wood. He uses insulated gloves and has insulated the wires he holds and a foot pedal swich to turn on the power.
The 9 July Club meeting was held at Sam Staffan's shop. Sam used to have a sign shop and after retiring expanded his interests into working with glass and wood. Sam has three lathes and does pen turning which expanded into larger turned items.
At the club meeting there were some Show and Tell items that show the skill of the club members.
Nice box with a mushroom on the lid.
Wood spoon and spatula turn from one piece of wood. The handles are turned and the spoon and spatula are carved or ground to shape.
Steve Promo turn this large vessel with a hole in the side. It also has some turquoise in a crack.
Steve brought in some of his stone collection and showed how he crushed the stone using a pipe and a steel drop rod (shown on left).
In addition, there were some Bring Backs raffled off.
Above are two large and thick slabs of walnut.
A crouch was brought in along with several slices of aromatic cedar.
Sam Staffan has a very nice shop and displayed around his shop are some very impressive products of his work considering he only started wood turning in June of 2021. Here are some results of his skills:
Some of his wood has been stabilized and turned and other embedded in epoxy and turned. He has added colors and other material to enhanced the look of the end product.
After a discussion by Steve Promo about he club Sam Staffan gave a demonstration of stabilizing wood using a special resin. Here is an edited video of that process.
link: https://youtu.be/Xxeee2XLa_w
During the meeting I recorded several videos of Sam's process including turning wood embedded in epoxy resin. I am working on putting these videos together in a understandable format so they will be posted later. - ajp2
Sam sent a picture of a partially turned object that was stabilized with resin. Interesting shavings or lack there of.
