Cherry Burl Shawl Pin

I turned the circular part of this cherry burl shawl pin from a small cutoff from a cherry burl vase project (not quite finished as of the moment).  The stick pin part was turned from a piece of regular cherry.  The round piece measures just over 2" across; the stick pin is 4 ½" long.

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Cherry Burl Bowl

I'd had a piece of cherry burl sitting around the shop for at least a couple of years and hadn't been able to figure out what to do with it.  I think it was the product of one of our club raffles.  Part of the problem was its odd appearance:  it looked like it had been hacked out of a tree with a hatchet - had no discernible shape, and many hatchet-chop facets all around - and it was impossible to tell what it had originally looked like.  Inspired, I guess, or maybe just made a little braver by the success of the cherry burl hollow form I'd just turned (see previous entry), I cut flats on the ends, put the chunk between centers and started turning for exterior shape.  Ultimately I turned a 100mm tenon on one end to mount in a chuck for hollowing, and just kept at it.  The completed piece (finished with Watco Danish Oil - Natural) is pictured here.  There are a number of bark inclusions and some gaps that run all the way through from outside to inside, which is one reason I didn't try to make the piece any thinner.  As a result it's a little heavy in the hand, but not too bad, and I think the overall appearance came out pretty well.  It measures about 6 ½" across and is 4 ¼" high.

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Cherry Burl Hollow Form (Vase)

In the gift exchange at our club's Christmas party I received a couple cherry branch sections with large burls.  I turned this hollow form from the smaller of the two.  (I put the branch ends between centers, rough turned the outside and put a tenon on one end; then reversed the piece, gripped the tenon in a chuck, finished turning the outside, and hollowed it out; finally I reversed the piece again, used the chuck in expansion mode to grip the opening by the inside edges, and turned the base.)  Since the wood was still green there was a lot of movement in the surface when it dried, as you can see in the pictures, which lends a very organic - even ancient - look to the piece, I think.  It measures about 7 ½" tall, and 4" across at its widest.

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Silver Maple Vessel

Our friends Bob and Pat had a Silver Maple taken down in their back yard recently and asked me to turn something for them from a piece that they had saved.  Since it had a flare out at the base I decided to try to keep that more or less intact, and turned this vase-like end grain vessel, instead of cutting the piece in two and turning a couple bowls.  What with the extensive bark interstices it ended up pretty interesting.  Bob and Pat liked it. 

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Sorry for being away so long - new stuff to come!

Obviously I haven't been keeping this blog up to date for quite some time, in spite of my resolutions to do so. Partly I spent the last several months working on a variety of house projects, and wasn't doing a lot of turning. But, most recently, we had our annual show at Olbrich Botanical Gardens October 23 and I got busy and started working on some pieces for the show. I'll get some of them posted here as well, but for now take a look at this Facebook link:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150361496247435.368421.839692434&type=1

I'll be back with you soon!

Box elder hollow form

My friend John Nicholson - a very skilled wood turner - makes a lot of these nifty hollow forms (vases), and is a great hands-on teacher. These photos show my version, turned in his shop while he kept at least half an eye on what I was doing (and told me what to do next!). This vase is turned from box elder and hasn't yet been finish sanded or had any finish applied - i.e., it's in the "raw" state. It stands almost 8" tall and is 5" across at the widest point. The most interesting thing about turning these - here's the magician describing the trick! - is that they are turned initially in one piece; then cut into two pieces, each of which is separately hollowed; then are glued back together; and then are finish-turned to final shape, detailed, etc. Can you tell which groove hides the glue joint? I used John's Derry Tools hollowing system to hollow the bottom part of the base. Let me know if you want to hear more about that.

Colorful Salt/Pepper Grinders

Our challenge for our last Badger Woodturners' meeting was to turn a salt/pepper grinder. I turned three, using some laminated dyed beech wood blanks that I had won in a raffle at a meeting last year. As you can see, the color and the effects of turning this material can be quite striking. The mechanisms in these are ceramic crush grinders; these adjust for fineness of grind with a knob at the bottom of the grinder. In the tall grinder (to which I also added a captive ring) there is a stem which extends from the grinding mechanism in the base up into the turnable top (which simply pulls off to fill the grinder with peppercorns or salt chunks). In the two smaller grinders the tops directly press onto the grinding mechanisms in the bases. The tall grinder is 11" high. The green one with the pointed top is 6" high; and the short, round one is 4 1/2" high. All of them are about 2 1/4" in diameter at their widest.

Zebrawood Coffee Scoop

At our last club meeting one of our members displayed on the show-n-tell table a coffee scoop which was composed of two turned parts - bowl and handle - which had been fastened together to create the final piece.  I decided to turn a coffee scoop out of a single piece of wood, and picked zebrawood to maximaize the effect of the striking grain.  This process requires first turning the handle and the bowl end as a sort of "lollipop" shape (see first photo, on table top).  Then you remount the piece "sideways" (in a jam chuck turned for the purpose), so that as the piece turns the handle is flying around and round in the same plane as the scoop-to-be.  Then you hollow out the scoop part just as if it were a tiny bowl.  The finished scoop measures 5" in total length, and the bowl is 1 1/2" in diameter.  It holds approximately one tablespoon.  You can find instructions online for turning either the one-piece or the two-piece scoops.

Bernie's Birthday Bowl

I turned this large cherry salad bowl as a birthday present for my wife. It measures 13" across the rim and is 5 1/2" deep. (Holds quite a lot of salad!) The bowl definitely looks taller than 5 1/2" - I believe that is the effect of the sweeping curve from the rim to the relatively small base.

More laminated off-center pendants, but no pics

For reference, see the April 25, 2010 post. The laminated off-center pendants proved to be a best-seller at the Olbrich Gardens show. Unfortunately (?) they all sold out, and I didn't get any close-up pics of the display - you can see some of them in one of the table photos in the Olbrich post, below. I only had a chance to turn one pendant out of the brightly colored, laminated gun-stock material (see the bottle stoppers), which also sold. So I'll have to do some more, I guess....

Bottle stoppers revisited - 2010

I turned a number of new bottle stoppers for the Olbrich Gardens show, some of which were pretty colorful. These were turned from laminated, dyed beech gunstock material provided by a member of our club (and which I won at a club raffle).