Well, I now have about 50 baubles in stock and feel that it's time to move on! This has been my first taste of having to turn what the customer wants, rather than what I want to turn, and I can now understand a few comments that I've read in earlier threads, about turning to order!
Bryan....in the end I developed a system for applying the spirit stains that worked well for me. I'd use scorch-lines as demarcations for the colour, then set the tool-rest a few inches away from the work. With the work spinning at less than 50rpm, I'd hold an artists' paint-brush well loaded with stain and gently touch it against the surface of the work, at a tangent to it, then slide the brush sideways slowly until it reached the scorch-line at the other end of the area that i wanted to colour. Sometimes I'd need to re-charge the brush with stain, but often, one brush-full would do. I'd then leave the lathe running for a minute or two, which stopped the excessive stain from running down to the lowest point of the work and collecting in a blob, causing deepened areas of colour. After a minute, or so, I'd increase the speed gradually and let the rush of air around the work dry the remaining stain off. I found that I could get quite a lot of control over the depth of colour and managed to make a good range of colours for this big, sample batch.
So now I can get back to turning what I want....but in the couple of weeks that I've been churning out baubles in the evenings after work, I've been inspired to make so many new shapes that I'm going to have to do a lot of thinking about what to do next!
Les
