Bubble Vase

Finally got round to doing this how to for the Bubble Vase.

The first thing you will have to do is to prepare some timber to be cut into strips, I used sapele and sycamore for my vase but any light and dark timber will do. Cut the timber so that it is aprox 1" by 1 1/4" your looking for a final laminate of 1" by 1" so allow for your saw curf, on my bandsaw I lose about 1/4" cutting the strips. you will need about 9 feet of timber alltogether

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Cut the timber into strips about 1/8" thick, if you use a fine tooth blade you shouldn't need to sand these, I don't. take 1 dark strip then 1 light strip and so on 2 strips cut up should make 2 new mixed strips, glue these together I use polyurethane glue for this it sets quickly and I clamp using sash clamps use some from the top and some from the bottom this stops the strips from sliding apart as you tighten the clamps.

Set your saw to 22.5 degrees and cut 48 pieces 1 1/8" long segments and 24 1" long segments there will be eight segments per ring, you should end up with 3 smaller rings and six larger rings glue thes up as described elsewhere on this site,try and make sure you have a dark face then a light face, then if you are really accurate at chucking the piece you will finish up with dark light all round the vase, so far I haven't managed to end up with mine like this.

you should have nine rings and a solid piece for the bottom.

glue the sanded rings together

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I then glue a piece of plywood to the top so that I can mount it using my screw chuck

When you turn this you have to shape it so that it looks like donuts piled up this will give the affect of circles on the segments (see the finished vase in the gallery.