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Question on texturing acorns

J

Jonathon.C

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Sep 16, 2005
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Location
Camas, Washington
Quick question... ya know those cute little acorns that everyone turns. I was trying to think of an easy and cheap way of doing the texturing on the cap of the acorn without having to go out and buy tools. Anybody got ideas?

Jonathon
 
acorns

Hello there,

You could use a burr cutter in a Dremel type tool, if you already have one. Another option is to hand carve them in with a carving tool, carver's knife, Etc. Both of these would be carried out off the lathe of course.This way you only need one small, cheap, tool.

I have used an old Victorian pastry cutter - the cutter is very good quality steel and resembles the texturing cutters on the sorby tool - with the lathe on a very slow speed and eye protection worn ALWAYS.

You could also use a small wood rasp and sand back afterwards.

Hope this helps

Andy
 
Burn'em

Jonathon
I turn an small acorn product. I burn the texture in with a medium sized tip on my Cub woodburner. Color and texture in one step.
Frank
 
Thanks for the ideas... Andy, where did you get the pastry cutter... what exactly does it look like?? Frank, the idea of wood burning sounds cool... I imagine a soldering iron might work similar, but wouldn't both a dremel and wood burner take forever to texture with?

Jonathon
 
Johnathon I like texturing them with a Dremel engraver. Not a Dremel with engraving cutter but an actual Dremel engraving tool. About $17 Take the point out of the engraver and put a 1/8" piece of metal in with a rounded tip. I used the shank of a 1/8" drill bit. This thing makes a wonderful texture that's useful for all kinds of things. OK that does cost some money but once you use it you'll love it. It also the best way to sign your work that I have found.
My best friend turned thousands of acorns in his early career. He doesn't texture the top at all. He burns it at high speed with a piece of carboard. Use the endgrain of the cardboard and run the lathe at very high speed. This really looks great and is certainly within your budget.
 
john lucas said:
He burns it at high speed with a piece of carboard. Use the endgrain of the cardboard and run the lathe at very high speed. This really looks great and is certainly within your budget.
Click to expand...

You mean he just takes a piece of corugated cardboard and uses the side... does this create a pattern or does it just darken the walnut??? I'll have to try this!!
 
I think in one of AAW journals from last year they had something on turning acorn boxes... they are really cute I just didn't want to get one of those texturing tools if there was a cheaper option!!
 
cutter

The pastry cutter is basically a toothed wheel held in a handle with a pin through the centre of the wheel. If you look at the wheels on the Robert Sorby Texturing Tool it looks the same except the thickness is far less. Having said this the steel quality is superb and only apply it lightly in a downward rake with the lathe on slow.

I also have the full Sorby kit and still find it useful

I found the pastry cutter at a car boot sale...I suppose yours would be called a garage sale?...and paid pennies for it. A good buy...but not quite as good as the time last year when I found a brand new 19mm deep bowl gouge and a new 19mm round skew for sale there at £5...about $10 I would think...

The texturing as applied with the dremel is not at all time consuming and is quite a relaxing occupation. I tend to do this kind of work in the house when it's to late to be in the workshop.
 
Johnathon I'll pull out my engraver and do some texturing this weekend and post a photo. Somewhere I have a photo of the burning method using cardboard. Randy did a tip for the journal on this and I photographed it. It doesn't texture the wood only burns it. However it looks really good if you texture and then burn. I'll do both and post a photo, maybe Sunday. I'm doing a box demo next tuesday so I'll just make an Acorn box with textured top to show at the demo, along with some others.
 
John
Cardboard or Hardboard (the dark brown 1/8" masonite board)? I have used Hardboard to burn big wide stripes on things. I use a piece of HPL (formica) quite often to burn lines on bottle stoppers. I don't like wire, I seem to have trouble holding it exactly were I want it to get started.

Jonathon, My 'acorn' product is small and all oak it only takes a few minutes to randomly poke the dots into the cap of the acorn. It adds just the right amount of color contrast. Then I coat with Deft and friction polish.

Frank
 
Hey thx for all this help... I'll have to try some of these ideas!! I love little projects :D John, I'll be looking forward to seeing some pix ;)

Jonathon
 
john lucas said:
Johnathon I'll pull out my engraver and do some texturing this weekend and post a photo... I'll do both and post a photo, maybe Sunday.
Click to expand...

Do you have your assignment finished... or do you want to recieve a failing grade?? ;) :p
 
The dog ate my homework. Actually I did make an acorn box and started to download the photos when I realized I hadn't taken a shot of the finished box. I put the card back in the camera, shot the box and then tried to download it and there was nothing on the card.
My Boss ran in through an image saver program this morning so hopefully I will be able to download them tonight. I have a club meeting so I won't be home until 9 or so.
 
;) Don't worry about getting pix posted right away... I am in no hurry!!

Jonathon
 
Here’s how I texture my acorn lids. I use a Dremel engraver, not a dremel with engraving cutter but a Dremel engraver. I replace the pointed tool with a 1/8†piece of steel that has been rounded over. Just “scribble†on the wood to create the texture. I do this with the lathe off.
If I don’t texture the top I burn the top with carboard. My camera corrupted an image so I lost that one but it’s just a fairly dark brown to black depending on how much you burn. You have to turn the lathe speed way up to do this.
The engraver textureing doesn’t burn with the cardboard. Apparently it somehow reduces the friction. I used a propane torch very gently to burn this then sealed it with lacquer sanding sealer.
 

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Hey... thx for posting the pic that acorn is really cool... so "scribbling" you mean the texture it kinda random lines? (in the picture the top came out kinda dark so it was hard to tell). I'll have to try your idea!

Jonathon
 
Maybe this will show the texture better. I lost the other photos in the card corruption or you would see the tool in use. Maybe I can shoot some tonight. I’m working late but will be home by 7:30 or so and the weather is warm enough I can get in the shop.

Textured-acorn.jpg
 
Oh cool!! That is a great pic! Thanks for posting that!

Jonathon
 
Here is what I did ..........

I turned an acorn box about two weeks ago and was waiting for some inspiration before finishing the top when this very timely thread appeared -- thanks, Jonathon for asking the question for me. There were many great suggestions and I tried several of them out on practice acorn "hats" (caps?) before deciding to go with the woodburning method. I used a chisel tip and made little chevron patterns. I came up with this design by studying the cap from a burr oak acorn (about the same size as a golf ball).

If you decide to do some woodburning, do it outdoors on a windy day. I did some of the practice work in my shop and smelled like I had smoked a pack of cigarettes (all at the same time) and my shop also had a smoky smell like there might be a smoldering fire somewhere. Besides, it would be unsafe with all of the shavings and dust everywhere.

nut-case-2.jpg

Bill
 
Wow I like that Bill. It gave me an idea I want to try. make a punch that is shaped like the triangle or possibly U shaped. punch the wood, burn it, steam it to raise the punched shapes and then sand the raised punch shapes so the natural wood color comes through. It would look similar but you would have some slightly raised dots all over.
Or you could burn it afterword. Burning lightly usually affects the high spots first so they would be burned and the background light.
Hope I have time to try it.
 
John Lucas,

The cap that I made has a very definite 3-D texture even though it does not show well in the blurry picture. I started by pressing the tip of the woodburning chisel into the wood at the apex of the chevron and then gradually rolled it over and downward to both burn and depress the lower layer. After burning, I used a soft bristle stainless steel wire brush (about the texture of a brass brush) to clean out the charred material. At that point, I thought that the high spots were too white so I used a felt-tip furniture touch-up Marks-A-Lot and just scribbled over the whole piece. I wanted to get rid of the burned wood smell, but did not want any shine in the finish so I used Matte Fixative spray and it scratched of both of my itches.

Bill
 
Jeff and Bill When I burned the top it kept catching on fire so I would blow it out. it must have expanded toward the end of the burning because it flew off the lathe with flames coming off and fell into a pile of shavings. Fortunately it went out on the way down. I'm standing there with a torch in my hand wishing I had a fire extinquisher instead. No harm done but it did get exciting for a few seconds.
 
That is a cool little acorn Bill... I just made a couple and I used the dremel idea. It works pretty cool! I didn't try torching the top of my acorns, but I tried friction burning them with pieces of paper bags. It doesn't work overly well (too slow and not even enough) so I ended up taping off the bottom part and staining the top and it looks pretty cool! Now I got to try the chiseling idea!

Jonathon
 
Jonathan,

Just for clarification purposes, when I said that I made the pattern on the cap by "woodburning", I was referring to an electric "woodburning pen" with a chisel tip installed. It is possible that my description could be interpreted as using a torch to burn the wood, which is not the case. I had not used a woodburning pen in many years and had forgotten how fast you can "brand" yourself. About 5 milliseconds for medium rare.

Bill
 
Haha... I see. I missed that the first time I read it! Would a soldering iron work the same in place of a woodburning tool???

Jonathon
 
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