Hollow form

[Derek]

Glad to have my lathe back up and running, it seems strange as I knew by the sound how it was behaving but now the motor is so quiet.
Started out with a very uninteresting piece of wood and was going to use black stain to enhance the grain that is there but did not get the desired effect so went back to natural. I did find a split so repaired this using various woods and finished off with a finial to echo the repair but not sure i like it may just have to change it.
The problem is the wife likes it.
The main body is Field Maple the inserts are Walnut, Ironbark and African Blackwood. The finial is the same three kinds of wood with the addition of some American black walnut.
The finish is acrylic sander sealer topped with an acrylic satin top coat

[Bryan Milham]

Inset Oysters, not seen that done in a long time. They look good and give an great point of interest.

But for me, the finial fails. The oysters are irregular and the wooden pebbles (for want of a better description) form a straight up cone. I think if they had also been offset to some extent, it would have looked better.

[Derek]

Thank you Bryan I have gone through various designs from a straight type finial to this and also what you described either with the pebble shapes or even spheres.
I may even just go with the form by itself without a finial. At least it is something that can be changed without altering the main form

[Bryan Milham]

I'll throw an off the wall idea at you.

Put a tiny rare earth magnet in each side of the wooden pebbles, people can they rearrange the order and it will 'wobble'. Don't know why I just though of that but it sounds like a stupidly great idea to me.