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. 

DSC03084

 

DSC03085

 

DSC03086

 

DSC03087

 

DSC03088

 

DSC03089

 

DSC03090

 

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).

Olbrich Gardens Show

For the past several years, in late October, Badger Woodturners, my turning club, has gotten together with the Madison Area Woodcarvers for a show and sale at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens. On the woodturning side about ten of us had sales tables, and the club also ran two demo lathes throughout the day, and also had a raffle of a large number of turnings donated by members. This year's show was very successful, and most of us who had items for sale did reasonably well. Smaller items tended to sell better than larger, more costly ones, reflecting the overall state of the economy.

In the "Links" column to the left I've added a link to the Badger Woodturners' recently created website, where you can read our newsletters (which also include photos of members' work) and find out a little more about the group.

Harbor Athletic Club, where my wife and I work out, permits members to post advertising displays in a couple of windows in the club lobby. I used the opportunity this year to advertise the Olbrich show and my participation. The display drew a number of nice comments.

Natural edged cherry crotch bowl

This a natural edged cherry crotch bowl which I turned earlier this year. "Natural edged" means that the bowl was turned with the center of the trunk forming the bottom or base of the bowl, and the bark on the outside of the trunk forming the top or rim. (This is the reverse of the orientation in which traditional bowls are turned.) A "crotch" is the intersection where the trunk splits into two or more sections, or a limb branches off from the trunk. You can often get some very interesting figure there. This bowl measures about 9" across by 4" deep. I sold it at the October 2010 Olbrich Gardens show (see next entry).

Unusual Pens

We had a pen making challenge for our September meeting, and I turned a couple of somewhat unusual pens for it. While most wood-turned pens incorporate hardware kits, with all of the metal pieces provided, I'd seen a demo some years back involving the turning of a 100% wood pen that incorporated the innards of a simple Bic stick pen. Here's the process: you drill an appropriately sized hole in the end of your blank, turn your pen, pull the innards out of the Bic, and insert them into your pen. Voila! Pretty simple, and allows for lots of variations. [If you're interested in the turning details, drop me a note.] I did two pens, of slightly different styles, both pretty long (8 1/2" and 9 1/4"). I've discovered that long pens are less likely to disappear on the desk or be mislaid. The longer of these two pens incorporates a "captive ring" (see last photo), which I turned using old dental scrapers I'd acquired from Sue, the very kind hygienist who cleans my teeth (and to whom I have since given the pen)! (Basically a captive ring is just a ring of wood turned loose, in place, from the same piece that holds it; they're a little tricky to do, at least with a tight fit.)