Moat Candleholder

Moat Candleholder
KAPOW 2020 Week 26	Wood Turning	December 27, 2020
KAPOW = Kevin’s Art Project of the Week

FAILURE! The KAPOW follows the warts-and-all approach–as a weekly art project is sure to produce.

This week I made a wood turned candle holder out of a block of Myrtle (starting size = 6x6x3 inches). All was going well……I turned the wood on the lathe (using the new lathe chuck I got for Christmas (thanks Mom & Dad!)). And if you look at picture #1 below, all was still quite good. I drilled the holes for the candles. There was a candle holder.

If only I had stopped there….. But, I thought it would be a great idea to pour some blue-tinted epoxy into the channel I had created in the top of the candle holder—a moat? (see pictures below). The epoxy did not set [lesson learned–always test the epoxy thickness, temperature, etc. before pouring into an almost finished project]. The epoxy remains gooey! Worse, in an attempt to help the epoxy to set, I left the candle holder in front of a space heater–too close!!!! The wood started to check and split (see picture #2 below). If the wood had not split, I would just goop out the epoxy and refinish the candle holder. As it is, I will wait and see if the checks/splits heal themselves (if so, there may be a return of the project!).