# FBE Vase



## Bonanza35 (Jan 20, 2011)

I got a call from a lady who had some wood with an "interesting pattern" she wanted sliced into cookies to sell as trivets to raise money for a hiking trail project. I said I'd do it until I saw the wood and about fell over. I convinced her to let me turn something out of the last 10 inches of the log. Hopefully this will bring in some money for them. 

6.5" x 7.5" minimal lacquer and buffed.


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## Bonanza35 (Jan 20, 2011)

Here are some progress pics:


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## Bill Boehme (Feb 9, 2014)

Wow is that stunning or what?

Your lathe looks remarkably similar to mine.


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## tewitt1949 (Nov 26, 2013)

what kind of wood is that? Very nice.


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## red (Sep 30, 2008)

Mind blowing beautiful! Great job, much better than trivets.

Red


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## Bill Boehme (Feb 9, 2014)

tewitt1949 said:


> what kind of wood is that? Very nice.


In woodturning forum jargon, FBE is short for flame box elder. Not all box elder has the red coloration, in fact, most of it does not have that beautiful red color. For the box elder that does have some red color, it typically isn't very showy. Finding a piece that this is very rare.

The sad news is that the red coloration fades to brown over time.


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## Hwood (Oct 21, 2011)

Real nice pattern in that piece, you done good. 
Bill you did a piece a few months back and if I recall finished it all in ca. Any thoughts on that yet if it held the red better.


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## Burb (Nov 30, 2012)

Thats gorgeous!! Thanks for sharing.


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## bond3737 (Nov 13, 2009)

DAAAAANG! Dont think ive ever seen the flame that dense especially in a piece of limb wood im assuming or was that from the trunk?? Also never so close to the pith! most of the stuff I get is out towards the edges. Love the form as well very very pretty. always a challenge dealing with the punk that almost always comes with that flaaame looks like you did it well!happy turnin, 
bond


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## firehawkmph (Apr 26, 2008)

Cool piece Bonanza, nice shape, wild color.
Mike Hawkins


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## peridigm (Dec 29, 2014)

Very nice. A friend of my that lives less than a mile from me has a mini forest of FBE. He didn't know he had them until he was cutting up some trees that had fallen during a storm. Unfortunately he did saw up a bunch of it for firewood before he found out what he had. You can pick them out among the oaks and poplars pretty easily. The bark has a pink hue on most of the tree. The trees are young maybe 12-16" diameter so he decided to let them grow more.


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## Bill Boehme (Feb 9, 2014)

Hwood said:


> Real nice pattern in that piece, you done good.
> Bill you did a piece a few months back and if I recall finished it all in ca. Any thoughts on that yet if it held the red better.


It is still about the same as it was back when it was made. I have one that I won in a drawing at our club about six or seven years ago and the red is rather faded, but still has a hint of red. I have another that I won at SWAT about three years ago and the red is holding up well although I suspect that it has faded slightly. I have a piece of half log in the garage that is two or three years old and the end of the log still looks red. I need to turn it to see what's in there.


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## Bonanza35 (Jan 20, 2011)

bond3737 said:


> DAAAAANG! Dont think ive ever seen the flame that dense especially in a piece of limb wood im assuming or was that from the trunk?? Also never so close to the pith! most of the stuff I get is out towards the edges. Love the form as well very very pretty. always a challenge dealing with the punk that almost always comes with that flaaame looks like you did it well!happy turnin, bond


Thanks, Bond. I think it's a small trunk but I can't be sure. The punkiness was manageable, not the worst I've seen. I wish y'all could see it in person. I didn't do a very good job on the pics. It is really the most spectacular FBE I've seen in person by a wide margin. I might have swung for the fences with a small opening HF but the piece belongs to a trail preservation group and I figured a more relatable vase form would sell more easily and wouldn't take 6 hours to hollow. I'll say this, it's the first piece my wife has enthusiastically wanted to keep. She doesn't think much of most of my work.


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## Bill Boehme (Feb 9, 2014)

Bonanza35 said:


> .... I might have *swung for the fences* with a small opening HF but the piece belongs to a trail preservation group and I figured a more relatable vase form would sell more easily and wouldn't take 6 hours to hollow. I'll say this, it's the first piece my wife has enthusiastically wanted to keep. She doesn't think much of most of my work.



It took me a few minutes to figure out the baseball metaphor, but it is true that the things that woodturners do to impress one another may not always be what everybody else likes.

Tell your wife that the only reason that you were able to create the beautiful HF is because of your Robust AB. My wife actually told me that I should get the Robust AB.

Is the "green" in the first few photos actually blue-gray?


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## Bonanza35 (Jan 20, 2011)

Bill Boehme said:


> It took me a few minutes to figure out the baseball metaphor, but it is true that the things that woodturners do to impress one another may not always be what everybody else likes. Tell your wife that the only reason that you were able to create the beautiful HF is because of your Robust AB. My wife actually told me that I should get the Robust AB. Is the "green" in the first few photos actually blue-gray?


The AB25 gets part of the credit. The rest goes to the wood. Yeah, I get real tired of trying to make people appreciate a 1/2" entry hole and a 1/8" wall. They just want the hole bigger so they can stick more flowers in it. And yes, I fought the photo colors until I gave up. It is more blue grey and the red is deeper in person.


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## Bonanza35 (Jan 20, 2011)

Bill Boehme said:


> Is the "green" in the first few photos actually blue-gray?


See if it looks as green on Facebook. I think these pics are smaller files. 
Www.facebook.com/jbphippswoodturning


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## cuerodoc (Jan 27, 2012)

WOW!! Great design to show the colors.
That's a really nice turning! You did that tree justice!
Did I say --Wow!

I've not found any Box Elder around my area....yet--but I'm looking.


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## Bill Boehme (Feb 9, 2014)

I tried tweaking the color a bit to see if it might look like the actual color. What do you think?


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## Bonanza35 (Jan 20, 2011)

Bill Boehme said:


> I tried tweaking the color a bit to see if it might look like the actual color. What do you think?


 I'm a little irritated by that. I worked with RAW images and spent considerable time trying to get correct color and you took my low res JPEG and improved it. Still not perfect but decidedly better. What did you use? Don't you dare say you did it on your smart phone! 
I can tell you bumped up the exposure level, or black level because my background is brighter now but the colors are definitely more accurate.


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## Bonanza35 (Jan 20, 2011)

Bonanza35 said:


> I'm a little irritated by that. .


To be clear, I'm not irritated with you, I'm irritated with my inability to do a better job of it myself. It's been a significant frustration. I'll take all the help anyone will give me.


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## Bill Boehme (Feb 9, 2014)

Bonanza35 said:


> To be clear, I'm not irritated with you, I'm irritated with my inability to do a better job of it myself. It's been a significant frustration. I'll take all the help anyone will give me.


I am also a RAW shooter and my normal photo editing tool is Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop. It's a bit more challenging to edit an eight bit JPG in ACR especially without a reference for white balance, but I tweaked the color temperature and bias until the tan part of the wood looked right. I think that the color temperature compensation was about +8 and the bias was about +33 IIRC. Then I did some tonal adjustments to reduce clipping of the darks ans lights.


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## djg (Dec 24, 2009)

I missed this one earlier. Quite nice. I never thought about trying one with the pith in the orientation you've got it in. A much better way to display the flame. No cracking problems?


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## Bill Boehme (Feb 9, 2014)

djg said:


> I missed this one earlier. Quite nice. I never thought about trying one with the pith in the orientation you've got it in. A much better way to display the flame. No cracking problems?


This looks like a situation where using CA might help to keep any potential cracking under control.


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## Bonanza35 (Jan 20, 2011)

djg said:


> I missed this one earlier. Quite nice. I never thought about trying one with the pith in the orientation you've got it in. A much better way to display the flame. No cracking problems?


I planned to rip the log into two bowl blanks as I would normally do but the flame pattern was just so perfect that I couldn't bring myself to disrupt it. The wood around the pith of FBE like this is usually somewhat punky which relieves some tension and alters the way it moves when drying. I cut a dozen or so cookies 1/2"-3/4" for the owner of the wood and they dried without cracking as well. That being said, yes Bill, I flooded the existing pith crack with thin CA before turning , just for some extra insurance.


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## Bonanza35 (Jan 20, 2011)

That made me think, she sold 10 of the chainsaw cut cookies for $45 each! This vase sold for $475. So I could have simply cut 11 more cookies instead if turning the vase and come out ahead. That's humbling. Glad they raised some money though.


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## Bill Boehme (Feb 9, 2014)

People look at a turned wood vase and equate it with a painted clay vase. But flat wooden cookies ... well, now you're talking real art. :yes:


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## 9thousandfeet (Dec 28, 2014)

Bonanza35 said:


> So I could have simply cut 11 more cookies instead if turning the vase and come out ahead. That's humbling. Glad they raised some money though.


 I'm glad too, but you raise an interesting point.
You could have spent a lot more time making a hollow form with a tiny opening, just to watch it sell for about the same money or perhaps even less!

The things that we do to impress ourselves and other turners, and the skills we learn from each other as turners, are fully appreciated by only a very small minority of the people who buy woodturnings.

There is indeed a small niche "art" market in turned work, containing some amazing and innovative work and populated by some lovely people to be sure, but also some out-and-out crooks (some galleries treat their artists like chattel, or worse) and pretentious posers who don't have any interest in our work other than as a tool to make money for themselves.

For everyone else, utility matters quite a bit. And for most people, woodturning is thought of—if it's thought of at all—as primarily a craft which produces useful items. 
Thus a simple trivet can be seen as being desirable compared to the vase in a degree that is spectacularly disproportional to the amount of work/skill required to produce each piece.

There are times when this, as you say, can be humbling. 
It's maddening to spend a lot of time on a piece, fussing over the ever-more-minute details that we start to fuss over as we get more and more skills, only to find the market often won't allow you a decent wage (sometimes even minimum wage) for all that extra attention.

We continue to do it, of course, because pushing our personal skill boundaries is such a huge part of the enjoyment of our craft.

But it's still maddening, isn't it?


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## Bonanza35 (Jan 20, 2011)

Well said, 9thouusandfeet. Keep in mind the trivets weren't even turned. They were literally chainsaw cuts I spent maybe 90 seconds on. I think she sprayed something on them but I know they weren't sanded to any significant degree if at all  

This would make a good thread topic.


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## 9thousandfeet (Dec 28, 2014)

Bonanza35 said:


> This would make a good thread topic.


I agree.
You thought of it first....:yes:


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