I'm all choked up...

A buddy at work told me he had a interesting piece of wood for me to work with. A day or two later he handed me a two foot long piece of oak that had been choked by a vine. The vine caused disfigurement to the branch that wound up making a great vase.

The wall width is a little wider than I planned but the lathe was taking a beating while turning this huge chunk of tree, so I had to leave a little more material than I had wanted. The paper thin vessel has alluded me yet again.

This is about as large as the lathe wants to go without exploding.

I do do the bamboo.

Here is an experiment with some bamboo in a lidded box.

It’s a little trickier than it looks because bamboo may look round, but it’s really not. I needed to hollow out a lip on the top and bottom to accept a glued in lid on the bottom. The top has a cap with a tennon which fits snuggly into place. The top is a little oversized to make up for the oval shaped bamboo, but I’m going to go a little smaller next time.

It’s a CA finish, but with CA being so darn hard and the out-of-roundness causing the sandpaper to rhythmically bounce off the walls, it’s not as smooth as I’d like. Next time I’ll probably try some wipe on polyurethane. Anyhow, it was a cool experiment and I’m sure I can improve on the idea.

Not finished finishing

Slowly chipping away at my wood reserve, I decided to use a little more of my Winthrop stash. If I had a pickup truck, I would have grabbed a bed load of this stuff. Being that my only mode of transport was a Volvo station wagon, I grabbed what I could. And it’s almost gone!

I tried a small bowl, taking from other lessons to avoid all the pith I could, I set to turning. An overnight soak in a DNA bath, a mere 4 days of drying and it was ready to be put back on the lathe.

So far, it’s probably the best thing to be made from the Winthrop wood, but the finish still isn’t right. I may look into some wipe-on poly or something like that. This was a coat of CA, which was then removed because it didn’t set right. Next a good sanding and a hit with spray lacquer. Still not as smooth as I’d like, so I’m going to have to pick up some more finishing goods till I find what I’m looking for.

It's all about the girth...

Really, it apparently is and I have the spam mail to prove it.

Ah, the mini lathe. It’s meant to turn small things, things only a couple inches in their diameter. When, I ask you, when is small ever enough? I need to see how big I can go with this thing. See if I can make use of the whole 8” which is listed as it’s max. Is it’s 1/2hp motor going to spin thins hunk of timber, we’ll just have to see.

I grabbed a piece of the Winthrop hickory for this. I’m slowly going through it while practicing the bowl tuning, which probably isn’t wise, but it was all I had within arms reach. I knocked the bark off it as ants had already eaten through it, leaving a layer of dirt (crap) underneath the bark. I started roughing the edges down slowly, eventually getting to a shape I thought was nice. Reversed it and started hollowing. It was a lot of material to remove with such an anemic motor, but it did it’s job.

After taking shape I gave it a baptism in DNA, not that I thought it would do too much good, but it wouldn’t fit in my soaking container. Wrapped in newspaper to dry a while. Pith at both sides of the piece will insure it to warp out of round, but we’ll just have to see how it looks after drying, sanding and finishing.

Flatsided experiment numero uno.

On the cusp of seeing the flat sided bowl being turned, I wanted to put my hat in the ring. I took a piece of the walnut that Raymond had cut square for me and I turned a small footed bowl. I thought about it for a few days, not wanting to simply turn your average small bowl. Time is short so there’s no room for mediocrity for me. My sanding of this piece may fly in the face of that statement, but I was more concerned with the shape of this than the finish. Just to see if I could create what was in my mind.

All in all I’m pretty happy with the experiment. Had the block been a little thicker I could have had the feet a little more pronounce. It's got a few tool marks, needed some more sanding. With a vacuum chuck or even my donut chuck completed I could have turned off more of the foot. Regardless, I knew the shape I wanted to try, I did it, so I'm pleased.

Hackjob...

Not having step foot in the shop for a while, I managed to get out and turn a bit of the hackberry log I had won, as mentioned previously. I actually started this a few days back and it’s sat, chucked in the lathe, for a few days before hollowing. Surprisingly aside from a little darkening there was no ill affects apparent. I turned the darkened spots off and hollowed it out.

I was able to use the hollowing tool that Raymond gave me, which works surprisingly well for such a primitive tool and such a small cutting surface.

Not much to be said about this piece as of yet. It’s still unfinished, drying in a ball of newspaper, hoping not to crack like the last one. Once dried it’ll be chucked again, rounded again, sanded, foot removed, maybe some black Gesso on the rim, I haven’t decided. Regardless, I’ll post an update when it’s ready.

‘Flat’tery will get you somewhere.

Thursday night I had attempted to figure out why our wireless router was dropping Lydia from Facebook. Needless to say, this was something that had to be solved before the world came to a screeching halt, flinging mankind into the cosmos, so I took a stab at it. With the saying 'No good deed goes unpunished' proving it's unwavering truth; I somehow killed the laptops wifi signal. Lydia makes it about 30 minutes before the hunger begins. The Facebook hunger. She needs a fix and needs is bad. Reduced to sitting in a chair, in front of an actual monitor and full keyboard and mouse, she sits.

Friday we are luckily occupied with school/work and an evening on the town, so she's able to cope with the withdrawal symptoms.

Saturday Raymond calls me. His wife is entertaining that evening which leaves him free to play in the shop. It's a rainy, nasty day but the shop is enclosed, room enough for two people, only a small amount of waltzing required if we need to move around. Lydia gives me the thumbs up so long as I take on hair washing duty, and I'm out the door.

Raymond was commissioned to turn a bowl from someone using what is called by some people 'legacy wood'. It's a piece of wood with a story behind it. This was a board of walnut that was taken from a family's land, brought to SC, then stored for 10 years or so. While not the first time I'd seen a flat edged bowl, it was the first time I had seen someone make one from scratch. When finished, it was a nice looking piece and I'm sure the customer will be more than happy with it.



Here's a note about that photo. That piece of walnut is spinning around 600 revolutions per minute. That's about 10 per second. It's got four corners. That's a corner spinning past a given point at about 40 times per second. Now, notice the dark circular outer edge of the bowl? That's not outer edge, that's actually the inner edge. What you can't see is another inch or two beyond that edge. It's moving so fast that it's basically invisible. When turning these you have to be VERY mindful of where your hands are. In a collision of your finger bones and dried wood at 600 RPM, there will be a clear winner and a clear loser.

He was also good enough to send me away with a hollowing tool he made. Recently he had made a larger one and this one would be more than enough for my mini lathe. I'm looking forward to testing it out, now I just need to come across come free time and decent weather. Wonder which will come first?