This shallow bowl is 2.5" high and 10.5" across at the rim. I turned it from a piece of honey locust trunk that I won at a club raffle. (I had rough turned it last summer and then finish turned it a couple of weeks ago.) This piece of wood has a lot of nice color variation.
This natural-edged apple vase stands 10" high and is 6" in diameter at the rim. The blank was cut from a piece of apple trunk (from a neighbor's firewood pile). The circular bark edge occurred where the tree had (long ago) grown out around the place where a limb had been removed. I tried a number of hollowing tools at a friend's shop in turning the inside (I liked the Rolly Munro Articulated Hollower best and have ordered one for myself). Apple wood turns nicely, but has a tendency to crack - you can use a lot of CA glue! This piece had a lot of nice color, grain and figure in it. (Sold at October Open Studio event.)
The challenge for our March 2007 Badger Woodturners' meeting was to create a musical instrument incorporating wood turning. I had turned a maple bowl from green wood, which had taken on a slightly oval but symmetrical shape as it dried, and decided to try using it as the base for constructing a mandolin. I consulted with a local guitar store, researched some books on building musical instruments, obtained some parts, and went to work. To simplify this first project, I decided to go with only four strings instead of the typical eight. I did not have enough time to send away for fret wire, so the fingerboard is currently fretless. (I hope to change that in the near future.) The resulting instrument is pictured below. It actually sounds pretty good, although it is very difficult to finger chords without frets (at least for me). And, I was fortunate enough to win the March challenge!
Spalted maple is often very beautiful. The trick is to show it off to best advantage. The spalting in this particular piece of wood made that easy! 5.75"H x 10"D.
I made these for this month's "challenge" at our woodturners' group. The ornaments are maple (4.5"H x 1.5"D) and walnut (5.5"H x 2.5"D). The vase is also walnut (7.5"H x 2.5"D). The flowers are dried daisies. But how do you create the open space inside the objects? The title gives a hint - sort of.
This vase or urn is composed of six rings, each containing twelve identical segments, plus a disk for the foot - 73 pieces of wood altogether! The woods from the top down are padauk, maple, cherry, maple, walnut, maple and cherry. It measures 6"H x 4.5"D. The small pieces comprising a ring are cut on a "sled" on my table saw so that each piece in the ring is of identical size and all pieces are cut at exactly a 15 degree angle at both ends. The pieces are then glued together to form the ring, and the rings are then glued together to form the rough shape to be turned. Then the vase is turned, inside and out. (There are a couple of tricks along the way....)
Here are a group of miniature birdhouses that I turned as part of a "challenge" in our woodturners' club. We typically have a demonstration of a particular type of turning or project at our monthly meeting, and the next month try to produce the project on our own. These are the first birdhouses I have tried; it's actually a lot of fun to do. The sizes range from 1.75" x 1.75" (the little feeder) to 1.75" x 5.25" (the 3-level condominium).
Here's another cherry bowl turned using the "flying corners" approach (see preceding post). I didn't find the shape of this one particularly attractive when I was done, so I glued up and turned the multi-colored cap from some scraps (from the bottom up: walnut, maple, cherry, bloodwood, and cocobolo; the knob is cherry). The result is certainly unusual, whatever else you may think of it! It measures 8" from side to side; the center "dish" is about 3.5" across.
The square bowls in the last (Dec. 18) posting were turned using a technique in which scrap pieces are added to the sides of a square blank, and this larger blank then bandsawed round. The bowl is then turned, as if the scrap pieces were the edges of a round bowl. When that is done, the scrap pieces are bandsawed off, leaving a bowl with straight sides. This bowl, however, was turned with just the square blank mounted in the lathe - so there were sharp, flying corners for the entire turning. Tends to focus one's attention. This bowl was turned from 8/4 cherry, and measures about 8.5" from side-to-side.
These two bowls are made from cherry; the stripes are bloodwood (red) and cocobolo (brown). There are at least two ways to turn square bowls, but for now you'll just have to speculate. I gave one of these to my father for his 90th birthday.
I turned this bowl from curly maple. I then turned the lid from walnut, and cut a rabbet on the under side of the rim of the lid to fit into the base. Finally, I turned the knob from purpleheart.