Wood Turning

Angel Top

Angel Top – 4″ tall, the skirt and legs are a top held in base of angel body by a rare earth magnet in base and ball bearing in top. made from walnut, cherry, maple, flowering crab apple. see https://youtu.be/FOT0VhNOILA ,http://lumberjocks.com/projects/206434 and http://lumberjocks.com/projects/193922

Submitted by: Gene Pitstick

Olaf Ornament

The body is turned from pine scrap. Wire arms and hands. Tiny puff balls for buttons. Black pipe cleaner hair. About 3.5″ tall

Submitted by: Gene Pitstick

Woodturning Back to Basics #6

Since I get a lot of questions about turning green wood, today’s Back to Basics is about turning a green Madrone bowl.

First of all: if you buy green wood and can’t get to it right away, you can store it in a mixture of dishwashing soap and water to keep it wet while also preventing rot. When you’re done, remember to put the bowl in a bag with the shavings or seal up the wood in some other way to control the drying time of the wood. If it dries too quickly, it may crack — and then all of your work is out the window

I’m also trying out a new bowl gouge in this video from Doug Thompson at Thompson Tools. The grind is a little different from what I’m used to, so there’s some trial and error involved. As with any woodworking tool, start slow, be cautious, and build your skills until you gain some confidence and experience. It will come more quickly than you think.

One of the most fun parts of turning green wood is the big, curly shavings produced. Since the wood is still wet, you get long looping curls of wet wood and relatively little dust. It’s a fun experience.

Look at those curls go!

Once I’ve shaped the outside of the bowl, I turn a tenon on the end. Make the tenon larger than you would on a dried piece of wood, as the chuck will compress it more than you expect. I start out with tailstock support just to be safe, but once I’m sure the outside is trued up, I can pull it away. You should also keep an eye on your chuck and re-tighten it from time to time.

If you do a lot of bowl turning, look into getting a corer. This tool will remove most of the interior wood and keep you from creating so much wasted wood.

If you want a thick bowl, drying is critical. However, if you want a thinner bowl, you can thin out the sides to just over 1/8” and it should dry that way without issue. Mine warped a little bit, but it didn’t crack!

Laser Cut Inlay Christmas Ornament

The Christmas ornament challenge 2016

The Christmas ornament challenge is under way for 2016. I will be judging the contest along with Alan Stratton, but first I wanted to kick off the challenge with an ornament of my own.

 

This ornament uses laser-cut maple lighthouse outlines and matching acrylic lighthouses from Ron Brown’s Best. I closed up the back with some blue tape and filled the outlines with resin, then pushed the lighthouses into the resin and let it cure. I glued all four pieces to a block of walnut and let it dry.

 

 

Once the glue and epoxy had plenty of time to set up, I turned the main body of the ornament round and added a tenon to one end. I mounted the piece in the chuck and drilled out the center, then hollowed most of the body. Once hollowed, I added finish, then parted off the piece and set it aside.

 

 

The ornament takes both a top and bottom finial. I turned these from Ebony. Whenever you work with a super-dense, super-hard wood like Ebony, it is imperative to have extremely sharp tools. Ebony and other tropical hardwoods will blunt your tools before you know it, so don’t be shy about sharpening.

 

 

I drilled a small hole in the top finial to accept hanging hardware and used a simple eye hook to finish it off.

 

 

I made a small mistake when turning the body; I didn’t clean up the ornament body quite far enough, so I had to turn a dowel down into a jam chuck so I could fix my mistake. Remember, a mistake is never the end of a project — it’s just an opportunity to learn something new (or remember something you should have known already, like in this case).

 

 

That’s it! If you want to participate, make sure to submit your entry on or before November 30, 2016. You can find the rules and submit your entries at http://www.aswoodturns.com/Challenges/