http://www.getwoodworking.com September 2019 The Woodworker & Good Woodworking 61
David Burton used resin to combine smaller pieces and offcuts of Victory timber into larger boards.
The sections were arranged in a tray lined with plastic sheet, and the gaps between them filled with
resin (epoxy, rather than polyester resin, which tends to shrink more); once dry, the whole tray was
filled with resin to bind the sections together. When the resin had cured, the faces could be sanded
to reduce the blanks to boards of uniform thickness. For turning, the reconstituted blanks were
sometimes stabilised either by using a sacrificial backing, or by gluing fillets across the back to tie
the parts together.
As these photos show, the combination of resin and wood opens up all sorts of possibilities for
turners: you could, for example, turn a bowl, fill it with wooden pieces and resin, and then re-turn
the interior. David also combined the Victory oak with gold leaf, painted leather, and pieces of the
copper sheeting taken from the ship’s hull, all of which add extra dimensions to the timber, and
opportunities to introduce contrasting textures, colours, and detailCOMPOSITE TIMBER
Here, fragments of Victory oak have
been embedded in opaque blackEpoxy resin can be used to combine small pieces
of timber into larger boards such as the one used
to make this table, which is also inset with a piece
of Victory copperVictory fragments and resin were added to partially
turned blanks, which were then finished to create
inlaid bowls...... in some of which the embedded fragments
still retained their rind of ship’s paint... the fixed centres making way for cups that allow
the sphere to be freely repositioned
A quick sand with Abranet, and the bosses are
cut away...
The planet-like sphere’s whorls resembles the
dramatic atmospherics of Mars or maybe Jupiter,
and a huge inclusion in the mid-latitudes looks
like an enormous meteor craterThe workpiece’s deep inclusions blur into invisibility
when the piece is turningfly off like something escaping the gravity of the
planet-like sphere, whose whorls resembles the
dramatic atmospherics of Mars’ surface, or maybe
Jupiter’s. The huge inclusion in the mid-latitudes,
meanwhile, looks like an enormous meteor crater;
it also limits the speed of the lathe, because the
workpiece, though altogether more regular in
shape, still isn’t balanced. If it comes out of the
cups, which way is it going to go? “Nobody
knows,” John answers, lending his ear as well
as his eye to the task as he listens for any sign
that something might be about to come adrift.
Working between the cups allows John to
reposition the workpiece freely, shifting its axis
so that he can chase the ghosts from the horizon
and finesse the shape – “though you have to
decide when to stop,” he says, “or you’ll end up
with a grape.”
The finishing touch, then, is some power
sanding – taking care to avoid softening the
definition of the inclusions – followed by a coat
of cellulose sanding sealer to protect the surface
from finger marks; this planet exerts an almost
irresistible attraction, drawing people to pick it
up and roll it in their hands.
From sapling to sphere, ‘The Lost World’, as it has
already come to be known, has been a long time
in the making, maybe half a lifetime or more. But
then what’s 30 or 40 years to a long-lived wood?
Hopefully, like HMS Victory’s oak, it will still bearound in 200 years or more, and the reason
that it was made one summer in the borderlands- to provide a tangible link to a Kentish orchard
and the long-vanished people who enjoyed it –
won’t be forgotten, either.