Woodturning a Simple Vase from Driftwood on the Lathe - Lichtenberg Figures

Gathering Driftwood from a recent visit to the Beach at Talacre. Found a great piece of wood for beginner woodturning projects, possibly ash? I took it home and cut it in half and left it for a few weeks. Mounted it into the lathe using the chuck faceplate it was fairly uneven so rather than use the drive and prongs went with this method. I used a really sharp bowl gouge to take off some timber then switched to my homemade carbide chisel. I rough shaped it and then finished it off with a old sanding belt ive got lying around. Added Lichtenberg figures using the MOT, it took a while and many soakings to get it to burn. I would have thought with it having spent time in the sea it would be saturated with salts but it doesnt appear to be the case and i had to do numerous wettings, getting it to travel up the neck was quite a challenge. Drilled it out and inserted a test tube so i can put an actual live flower in it with water to keep fresh. No splitting or cracking yet although it was about 6 months from going to the beach and actually getting it onto the lathe. Music with thanks! Andreas Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/