While watching videos on making bent wood rings, I realized that it should be possible to wrap wood veneer around a dowel core and create a perfect socket to accept a brush knot. A 1" dowel is 25mm, which is ideal for a 24mm knot.
Steps: cut a brush core from 1" dowel rod. Cut 6-10 strips of wood veneer, making them about 10-15mm "taller" than the height of the dowel piece. Looks like 10mm is ideal for my preferences. Sand a taper into both short edges of each veneer piece, so that when wrapped, seams are minimized. Using CA glue (super glue), wrap the dowel in the wood veneer. A steam source helps soften the veneer and make it bend without risk of breakage. Using a rotary tool and/or other abrasives, shape and finish the handle.
This is a tedious process, but here's what's possible:
Not bad for not having a lathe or drill press. The handles above are arranged in the order I made them from left to right. The fifth one was painted with artist quality watercolor paint before finishing with Tru-Oil.
Here's the three middle ones with the veneer stock they came from (you can see how the Tru-Oil deepens and darkens the color a bit):
I chose a shape for these that would be simple and maximize the amount of wood grain visible.
Another picture, including the most recent handle of the bunch, and knots in each:
The knots are all from APShaveco, from left to right: Synbad bulb, 2BED fan, cashmere fan, faux horse bulb. All are just resting in their sockets; they're not glued in yet. The handle on the right was made with nine layers of veneer, three each of light, medium, and dark colors alternated continuously. A nice banded appearance resulted.
The purple (beet!?) colored brush got the honor of the best knot of the bunch, a G5C:
I shaved with this one today for the first time, and other than having some paint run off the bottom of the handle due to not enough layers of Tru-Oil, it worked great. I am adding more layers as we speak. Let me know if you have any questions about how this works. I haven't seen this approach anywhere else and enjoyed making it work. Good projects to all.
Steps: cut a brush core from 1" dowel rod. Cut 6-10 strips of wood veneer, making them about 10-15mm "taller" than the height of the dowel piece. Looks like 10mm is ideal for my preferences. Sand a taper into both short edges of each veneer piece, so that when wrapped, seams are minimized. Using CA glue (super glue), wrap the dowel in the wood veneer. A steam source helps soften the veneer and make it bend without risk of breakage. Using a rotary tool and/or other abrasives, shape and finish the handle.
This is a tedious process, but here's what's possible:
Not bad for not having a lathe or drill press. The handles above are arranged in the order I made them from left to right. The fifth one was painted with artist quality watercolor paint before finishing with Tru-Oil.
Here's the three middle ones with the veneer stock they came from (you can see how the Tru-Oil deepens and darkens the color a bit):
I chose a shape for these that would be simple and maximize the amount of wood grain visible.
Another picture, including the most recent handle of the bunch, and knots in each:
The knots are all from APShaveco, from left to right: Synbad bulb, 2BED fan, cashmere fan, faux horse bulb. All are just resting in their sockets; they're not glued in yet. The handle on the right was made with nine layers of veneer, three each of light, medium, and dark colors alternated continuously. A nice banded appearance resulted.
The purple (beet!?) colored brush got the honor of the best knot of the bunch, a G5C:
I shaved with this one today for the first time, and other than having some paint run off the bottom of the handle due to not enough layers of Tru-Oil, it worked great. I am adding more layers as we speak. Let me know if you have any questions about how this works. I haven't seen this approach anywhere else and enjoyed making it work. Good projects to all.