Geoff Bacharach
17th May 2025

Geoff is one of our senior members who has demonstrated for us before, in 2018, 2019, 2024 and today, 2025.

He has specialised in  combining wood and resin and brought along the essential tools needed. The photos here show the steps taken to create spherical ball with embedded wood.

The first step is to select a suitable piece of gnarled wood which is glued on to a base that will fit in a chuck and serve as a base for the casting mould. The mould consists of a plastic tube (4 inches in this case) that is glued on to the base.

At various stages glitter flakes are added as shown on one of the photos.

The turning process to create the ball is done using Paul Howard’s Jig as shown. When one half of the ball has been turned the other half is mounted in a vacuum chuck to aid the final shaping as well as sanding and polishing.

Once the mould has been made and the tube inside smeared with grease the resin is added so that the gnarled wood is completely covered. Once the resin has set the tube is removed from the base and the solid casting fitted in a chuck. The grease helps removing the casting from the tube.

It is important to make sure that the base is concentric with the tube