I'm Not the Super Fan but I am a Fan!
Aug
27
Written by:
Joe Brinkman
8/27/2012 4:50 PM
Earlier this summer Will Strohl announced the DotNetNuke Super Fan Contest for 2012. I love our community and how passionate they are about DotNetNuke. I was really excited last year to see some of the great Super Fan entries. This year I wanted to participate even if I couldn’t “officially” enter.
As many people in the community know, I love doing woodturning in my spare time. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much spare time this year. I started a new project this past January and just completed it this past weekend.
I really love turning bowls and platters. Last year I was experimenting with a technique that I learned from Al Stirt that he used to make pieces like this Transforming Wave Bowl. Like many wood working techniques, it is easy to learn but takes a while to truly master.
For my entry I wanted something that highlighted my passion for DotNetNuke. I have also been playing with marquetry which is the process of creating pictures using different materials. This is a very difficult and time intensive process. Some marquetry pieces can take upwards of 10,000 hours to finish. I didn’t invest nearly that much time, but some days it felt like it might take that long. Of course my work is no where near the same quality as a true master but I enjoy it nonetheless.
One of the first steps was taking a basic DotNetNuke logo and deciding how to best display it using nothing but wood. I would need to find wood to represent the different shapes and colors. With my woods selected, I used my scrollsaw to cut out the constituent components of the DotNetNuke logo. (Click on any image below to see a larger version)
As you can see, I kept things pretty simple since this was only one part of my finished project. With the individual parts cut-out, I created a “medallion” with a recess cut to accept the logo pieces.
This was a bit of a shortcut because normally I would have created the recess in the actual woodturning. Again, I wanted to make things easier since I am still learning marquetry and working with an odd shaped piece is much harder than working with this small medallion.
My bowl is a fairly basic shape and has already had the rim and backside coated with a black Gesso paint. This paint is typically used as a base paint for canvas but works well as a coating for these wood pieces.
You can see in the picture above that I have turned a recess in the bowl so that I could put the DotNetNuke medallion in the center once it was complete. Once the medallion was in place I laid out a design that I wanted on the rim.
I kept the overall design on the rim fairly simple so that it would not completely overpower the DNN logo in the center.
With a little grove around the medallion and some additional gesso, I am able to highlight the medallion and make a nicer transition from the Maple to the Osage Orange used for the medallion. Once sanded it looks great.
One thing that I really like about using the gesso paint is that it allows me to add some subtle effects like adding texture to the front and back of the bowl.
All in all, I am pretty happy with the way the project turned out. I estimate that it has taken more than 30 hours of work but it is just a drop in the bucket considering all the time I have spent on DotNetNuke in the almost 10 years I have been working on the platform.
I may not be the “Super Fan” but as you can tell, I am definitely a huge fan. I would love to see how much of a fan you are. If you hurry you still have a few days to get your entry in for the Super Fan contest.