Lovely figuring Horst, The design makes the most of it, I like the highlighting of the inner edge. (friction burn or dye?)
Garry, we now go looking for pieces that show discoloration streaks at least, which I believe is at its most pronounced if the wood has been 'harvested' in the summer whilst there are a lot of sap sugars present and dried slowly.
Hello,
Thanks a lot for the compliments.
I bought the wood on ebay. It was a bunch of 3 pieces of sycamore and 2 pieces of walnut that I got for the starting price. This particular piece didn’t look very promising to me and definitely didn’t show any signs of figure. It was dirty with waterstains on it. I put it on the lathe more or less only to find out how sycamore turns, because I hadn’t turned it before. I did a few cuts to make the thing round and called it a day. I went back to it the next day with little enthusiasm. But when the figuring showed up after a few more cuts I got all excited about it. The highlighting of the inner edge is a friction burn which at first was rather an accident then planned. I wanted to find out if an old "secret" turner's remedy really worked, i.e. finishing the surface with a handful of shavings. When I applied a bit more pressure the edge turned black. It took some time till it dawned on me what had happened, but then I liked it.