March Workbench

[Ronald Bock]

My daughter wanted to do a really fancy paint job on a shoveler so I rounded this guy and got him to this point yesterday and today. I'll do the details work on the bill tomorow then take him over her place ( excuse to visit the granddaughter). She wants to try stoning and texturing before paint. Should be fun to see what she does with him.

 

[Don Mintz]

that's should be a dandy. I prefer stoning to wood burning. It's way faster with basically the same result. My wood burner is practically new, but I've had it several years. There are things it can do that a stone can't, but not much.

 

[Ronald Bock]

that's should be a dandy. I prefer stoning to wood burning. It's way faster with basically the same result. My wood burner is practically new, but I've had it several years. There are things it can do that a stone can't, but not much.

I've always wood burned when I wanted feather detail. Never really understood the stoning process. Probably since 95% of my birds are smoothies. I do a few nice mantel pieces with wood burning but mainly working birds.
My daughter saw some videos on the stoning process. It'll be interesting to see how she does him.

 

[Don Mintz]

I wood burned a lot back in the day with a little detailer cub, it's better for small stuff and it's better if you are using fuzzy wood like basswood. But it takes a lot longer to cover a square inch of decoy than stoning. I picked up the idea of stoning from Breakthrough magazine. I have an assortment of 1/8 " shank diamond cylinders I use on my #28 hand piece with the Foredom. It can be done with the micro rotary files my son uses in the dental lab. The diamond cylinders can do big deep heavy lines or smaller finer lines, just use a variety of diameters to see what works best.

This is stone feathering on a goose body decoy, I used my biggest diamond stone, 1/4" diameter for production molding. It's just a good way to make something a Chinese factory painter can rub and buff color. It's kind of fun doing all the feather splits. It's fast, I did all the stoning on this giant canada in about 5 hours. With a wood burner it would have taken 5 days.


When I'm stoning something more decorative I use a 1/16 " cylinder or even smaller to get finer lines. I think your daughter is going to like this process.

 

[D. Hinton]

Knot repair on a bird in progress