TWStud's Musings » Friends

FINALLY got around to updating my website!

TWStud — Sun, 17 Apr 2022 21:50:24 +0000

For some reason, which totally escapes me (other than I’ve been pretty busy in the last two years…), I have failed to maintain ‘current’ events on this website. Well, the last few days I have had some time (while waiting for finish to cure on a very important woodworking project) and have added posts dating all the way back to February 2020! Yeah, I know, it’s been a long time…

I was surprised to find that, as I started, I couldn’t even view the website because the hosting company had updated some software without updating all the requisites so the site didn’t even work! Sigh…

In any case, if you’ve been one of the ones who have been checking in, I apologize for letting this languish and will try to do better in the future!!!

Terrain Map Box Birthday Present

TWStud — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 16:59:35 +0000

Refining my CNC carving skills I realized I could try carving terrain maps on Corian. I saw something similar added on to a wooden box and decided this would make a great birthday present for a friend of mine. So, after capturing a terrain map of Penobscot Bay from Terrain2STL, I carved the terrain into a piece of Corian and, to hold/frame it, I designed a box made out of Ambrosia Maple with a Mahogany liner.

The map covers most of Penobscot Bay, from Owl’s Head to the mouth of the Penobscot river at Sandy Point, with Camden on the West side, Castine on the East. You can easily make out Belfast, Camden, and Rockport Harbors, Lincolnville Beach, Vinalhaven & North Haven, Islesboro, and Castine as well as the coastline around Searport.

Corner view of box with carved terrain map.

Opposite corner of box with terrain map.

View showing interior of box with Mahogany lining.

Top view of terrain carving of Penobscot Bay on Corian.

Making name tags for Kate’s Wedding Reception

TWStud — Sat, 16 Oct 2021 21:09:21 +0000

When Kate started planning her wedding WAY back in the Winter of 2019, she asked me if I could make the name tags for the Wedding reception. Well, after an extra year to prepare for it, I, fortunately, started in the spring of this year and, working with Kate, came up with a wooden card, laser engraved with a Lavender flower (the reception was held at the Lavender Farm in Durham), and CNC engraved script names.

To cover prototyping and last minute additions and changes, I made over 200 blanks. Good thing, too! There were a few cutting mistakes, some name misspellings, some last minute additions (subtractions weren’t a problem), marriages, divorces, and even a ‘he’ becoming a ‘she’…

Here a couple of ‘random’ examples of the tags I made…

Examples of the name tags I made for Kate’s Wedding reception. The stands are made from HDPE that I machined in my workshop. The gold one is after Paul painted all the ones used at the reception. Pretty fancy!

Sail on Schooner Appledore

TWStud — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 16:22:58 +0000

This summer we took a few trips on the Schooner Appledore out of Camden Harbor when friends and relatives came to visit. They were all fun trips.

Various Coasters

TWStud — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 15:43:35 +0000

Having successfully found a method (see Gift for a good friend ) to create coasters with my Laser systems, I made a variety of coasters throughout 2021. Here is a sampling…

Coaster capturing one of Kate and Paul’s wedding photos. Here they had just ‘buried the whiskey bottle’. The photographer captured the iconic American Gothic theme… I made a set of these for Kate and Paul. I kept the ‘rejects’ ;-)

For guests to our house in Belfast.

Image to be laser printed on Ceramic coaster as gift to party host.

Thomas Whittier House on High Street, Belfast, Maine
Made for a good friend whose Grandmother owned the house when my friend was a child.

Negative Image on Slate. For a good friend.

Gift for a good friend.

TWStud — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 15:19:13 +0000

Inspired by a gift I made about a year ago at the request of a good friend and, having recently learned of a method to laser engrave images onto ceramic tiles, I decided that I just needed to make a few of these:

Coaster engraved on to ceramic tile.

He liked it so much he ordered a bunch for his friends and certain employees of the National Park Service. I consider that success!

Man! What a party!

TWStud — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 22:28:17 +0000

For my birthday Kerry treated me to a trip to Pinehurst where we were going to play golf and stay at the Holly Inn overnight. Well, unfortunately it actually snowed that evening so we didn’t get to play golf, but did have a lovely time at the Inn.

Little did I know, that ‘treat’ was merely a trick to get me away from the house so she could have caterers and our daughter’s setup a HUGE surprise party for me. Several family and friends were there, some having traveled all the way from Maine! It was great and literally left me speechless. So… unable to do better than the following photos…

Clare MADE THIS CAKE! Isn’t it GREAT?!

Retirement gift for National Park Superintendent, Kate Cannon

TWStud — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 21:18:42 +0000

A very good friend of mine, who has a very close association with Canyonlands National Park, realized, after seeing that I had a CNC Plasma cutter, that we could make a nice gift for the current Park Superintendent, Kate Cannon, who is retiring next week.

My friend suggested that a silhouette of Druid Arch, a difficult to find, but very imposing natural arch, would be appropriate. Fortunately I had a fairly nice and high contrast photo of the arch that I took on a trip in 2005. So…
Here’s the arch:

Druid Arch

and here is the gift:

Gift to retiring Canyonlands Park Superintendent, Kate Cannon.

Christmas 2019

TWStud — Wed, 25 Dec 2019 20:21:22 +0000

Won’t spend a lot of time here today, but here’s a sampling of this year’s Christmas presents that I’ve made:

Bud Vase turned from Holly and Cherry.

Bud Vase showing Cherry lamination.

Bud Vase bottom detail.

‘Sputnik’ Sea Urchin ornament.

‘Dale Nish’ style Birdhouse ornament.

Acorn Birdhouse Ornament

Ice Cream scoop with removable handle for dish washer cleaning.

Close up of ‘button’ serendipitously added to the handle.

Book Bin to store our Granddaughter’s many books. Just the right height for her to reach in, pick a book, and bring to Grammy or Grandpa to read!

Outtakes

The secret to doing decent woodworking is to learn how to correct your mistakes. In the process of making some of these gifts, I made some doozies! I thought it would be interesting to show what mistakes were made and how they were corrected.

Here is the first one, and it is a doozie! When I was almost finished with the vase, I was shaping the bottom to make a nice stable base for the vase to stand on and, as I drew the tool away to examine the progress, I carelessly let the tool touch the workpiece. In an instant the spinning workpiece caught the tool and slammed it into the tool rest, making a huge dig in the side!

Major WHOOPS here! The nice smooth curve now has a nasty deep dig into it!

This vase was so far along and I had little confidence that I could fix this big gouge without significantly altering the overall curve of the piece. Fortunately, I live near a great resource, the Chapel Hill Woodturner’s Club, and I was able to go to their facility and ask Frank Penta, an extraordinarily talented woodturner, to help me. He was impressed with the vase and barely even noticed the nasty dig, which I thought totally killed the piece! I mounted the piece in the lathe and he showed me how a pro does it! The shavings coming off his tool were so light they literally floated in the air and, in no time, he had shaped the base to follow the curve and fix the piece! THANK YOU FRANK!

Here is the next one, while not as potentially tragic as the vase, it still left me with a case of having to fix a piece that was well on its way to something I liked, but dangerously close to being ruined!

As I was profiling the end of the handle, before removing it from the lathe, I was too heavy handed with the gouge and made the turn around the corner too close to the nicely shaped lamination on the top of the handle. Consequently I didn’t have enough room to try to fix this mess.

So… in this case, I realized without enough material to fix the end I knew I had to add more material!

So, rather than trying to turn off a shape, I thought that I could drill out the end of the turning and add more material with a plug that would give me room to shape the end nicely. You can see the nice tear drop shape on the handle that I was trying to preserve.

I turned a scrap of Cherry to make a plug to cover the end of the handle. I decided, since I had plenty of scrap, to experiment with adding a design to make it look as an intended added detail.

So, in this case, the ‘fix’ was actually an enhancement to the original design as it added a unique detail that looked interesting and attractive AND covered up the mess up!

Protected: Chloe’s Spot

TWStud — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 17:40:08 +0000