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How is this done? this is made of birch laminate, but how does he get the colours like that apparently different colours for each layer?
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Dyed before hand?
Dye wood, form laminate with different coloured layers, form shape from block, voila.
Yeap - each ply dyed before its laid up.
Look for Peter Chatwin and Pamela Martin's work, They're the daddy of this sort of thing. After laying up the plys they cut and reassembles them several times again before he starts the shape them, so you get more going on than just a simple contour map
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Most of their work is pre internet though, so you might need to look out books of their work to see more
Aye - stain the wood - glue together and shape. I've done this before when turning bowls - works well and is quite effective.
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So the individual laminate sheets must be dyed all the way through?
Else when carved/ sanded afterwards the real colour of the wood would show through.
So the individual laminate sheets must be dyed all the way through?
yeap - that sort of what dyed means. Otherwise the wood would just be painted 🙂
From fuzzy memory you'd probably use something like spirit based aniline dye.
The Chatwin / Martin stuff is sycamore. If you look at skateboards (which are maple) the plys in those are often dyed through too, and those are pretty thick plys.
In your OP the dye is pretty strong throughout the layer and grain. In Tiggs example the dye is more concentrated at the faces of each ply and has been drawn in by elements of the grain so it looks more woody.
You could laminate anything in there too. I've seen nice examples of plys laid up with layers of clear and coloured perspex before they are turned. Theres a fine line between ace and awful though