Sometime back my son Richard brought me a large stem of Gorse, the bark is particularly interesting in that it is deeply fissured and angular making for a most interesting texture. Having already asked what He and his wife Jen would like me to make them, Candlesticks were settled on and I decided to use the gorse for the job.
In drying the wood split considerably, so a colour fill seemed a good option, having been employed several times before I was confident it would look OK. I also got some pearlescent powder which leaves a nacreous sheen, it works OK, but unfortunately part of the process is to heat the powder up upon the surface it is adorning to a pretty high temp with a heat gun, experiments proved that this darkened the wood (reaching a scorching point) and also caused further splitting, so I had to abandon that idea.
The bark, while looking great as a texture, was also pretty flaky and messy looking, I gave it a scrub with a brass brush which did improve it some, but it still had lots of tiny flakes hanging off, so I used this extremely fine gold powder and brushed it into the bark, then sealed it with an acrylic sealer, this settled the flaky nature and made an interesting use of the texture as it almost looks like native gold in rock.
The colour was powders mixed with resin and the run into the splits and turned off onces set, small gaps had CA and powder applied. At the point where the bark meets the turned areas I tried to create an effect that simulated the veins of colour disappearing into the craggy rock, it works for me at any rate.
I also incorporated some of the gold dust into the dark blue to make it look like Lapis Lazuli.
Finish for the turned section is shellac.
In drying the wood split considerably, so a colour fill seemed a good option, having been employed several times before I was confident it would look OK. I also got some pearlescent powder which leaves a nacreous sheen, it works OK, but unfortunately part of the process is to heat the powder up upon the surface it is adorning to a pretty high temp with a heat gun, experiments proved that this darkened the wood (reaching a scorching point) and also caused further splitting, so I had to abandon that idea.
The bark, while looking great as a texture, was also pretty flaky and messy looking, I gave it a scrub with a brass brush which did improve it some, but it still had lots of tiny flakes hanging off, so I used this extremely fine gold powder and brushed it into the bark, then sealed it with an acrylic sealer, this settled the flaky nature and made an interesting use of the texture as it almost looks like native gold in rock.
The colour was powders mixed with resin and the run into the splits and turned off onces set, small gaps had CA and powder applied. At the point where the bark meets the turned areas I tried to create an effect that simulated the veins of colour disappearing into the craggy rock, it works for me at any rate.
I also incorporated some of the gold dust into the dark blue to make it look like Lapis Lazuli.
Finish for the turned section is shellac.
