Woodturning with Martin Adomat

I had the opportunity of doing a woodturning course with Martin Adomat in Bethlehem which is a suburb of a town called Lengenwang in southern Germany. The theme of the course was 'Design and structuring'. The turning was done with wet oak as it has a lot of acid in the wood which reacts nicely with the later treatment. For the surface decoration I did the grooves with a sharp parting tools and then brushing it with a bronze brush attached to a hand drill. Finally it was then 'smoked' overnight with ammoniac which gave a dark finish with lots of variation and character.

The next photo is a close up of the surface effect after the 'smoking'

After drying, the wood moved quite a bit to give an oval form

I like the effect that can be achieved and still want to experiment a bit more with some variation, also to see which other south african woods has enough acid to give similar effects.
Photographs again are not very proffesional as they were taken in my small flat in Ulm with my cellphone.