Laminated Off-center Pendants

In February I did a demo for our turning group on how to turn laminated, off-center pendants. This process involves first, laminating together layers of the woods and veneers you want to include in your pendant and then band-sawing the blank to rough size. Then you mount the blank on the lathe glued to a wood waste block, which is mounted at an angle in your chuck. That way when you turn the block you will create a thinner side (the top) and a thicker side (the bottom). After that, you move the waste block slightly to one side in the chuck, and turn the center hole, which will be offset because you moved the block over. Make sense? If not, take a look at the photos and you'll see what I'm driving at. There are several additional pendants shown in the listings at my Etsy store. Most of these pendants are 2" to 2 1/4" in diameter. All of them are mounted on a leather necklace with a metal spring clasp.

My dougswood Etsy Store

One of the things I've done over the past few months is set up an online store on the Etsy website. Etsy provides a storefront set-up for craftspeople to sell their creations in a relatively low-overhead environment. Take a look and let me know what you think! Just click the title bar of this post and you will go to my Etsy store page. Then click your browser's back button to return here. (Or, you can click with your right mouse button to open the Etsy store page in a new window or tab, and then just close it when you're done.)

Blogging Again! Large Cedar End Grain Bowl

Since I've been away from this blog for several months I'll go back and pick up some of the things that I've done in the interim, but not necessarily in the order I did them. This first entry is one of my more recent pieces. I won a section of red cedar tree trunk at one of our club raffles, and decided to try an end grain bowl with it. As you can see from the pictures the wood is spectacularly colorful. Cedar, however, has a notorious tendency to crack, and you can also see evidence of a number of repairs which were made as the bowl was turned. This bowl measures about 9 1/2" across at the rim; 10 3/4" at its widest outside diameter; and 6 1/2" deep. It is finished with semi-gloss polyurethane and buffed.