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!!!

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.

How could I refuse?

These were engraved and cut into 3mm Baltic Birch plywood with my CO2 laser and then sanded and finished with a clear coat of water based varnish.  I made 18 of these so that all the kids would get one.  Great fun!

Batch of 12 Valentine’s Day ‘Cards’ drying in Finishing room.

Hence a project, that my granddaughter and I could build together, was born.  Behold, Meow’s Chair:

Meow’s Chair

I made the pieces and then my granddaughter inserted each one into the appropriate spot after I applied glue.  Soon the chair was done and it fit perfectly for Meow!  Needless to say, everyone was happy with the result!

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!

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.

The different approaches are useful when:
A single piece of wood is attractive as a single monolithic turning.
Two pieces are useful when you want contrasting woods or you want a level of detail in the stem that the material of the cup can’t support, for example, an off center turned stem.
Three pieces are similar to two pieces except that, with the base being separate, you can face turn that and add details like textures that might not look good in a single stem. Also, of course, it would allow three totally different pieces of wood to be used in the piece.
Here is what I’ve produced as a result of the workshop:

A collection of goblets I turned as a result of the Goblet turning class. The two on the right are one piece goblets, while the funky one, made of Maple Burl and dyed Walnut stem and base is a three piece goblet.

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

I used a single piece of wood to make both rails and selected the section to maximize the grain continuity between the two sides. You can see the center line following the center of the grain pattern.

Hunk of Cherry used to make side rails for back of chair.

Close up of grain pattern.

The section sliced and laminated.

The section has been sliced into multiple thin layers, glued back together, and pressed into a vacuum bag against a form shaping the piece into the curve for the back.  The diagonal lines were used to keep the pieces in order in case they were dropped before gluing.  This is a trick from the old punched card days

Side rails sliced into two rails and being fitted to head and bottom boards.

Note the extra slice on the side, this will be used as a guide to make the inside support form.  Also note the curve of the tailboard marked on the wooden block.

Sides with Tenons, ready for gluing back frame.

Using Domino floating tenons made this job a lot easier!

Assembled form for back support.

The support followed the curve of the rails, with the horizontal curves changing slightly from top to bottom to give lumbar support.

The form filled with expanding foam.

I used a stiff formulation of expanding foam to provide solid support for the fiberglass shaping.

Filled form shaved to level surface.

Needed a few repairs to fill some gaps.

Form covered with heat shrink covering.

This covering is used on model aircraft.  It is stuck to the surface with an hot iron and then shrunk to fit tightly.

Form, all ready for fiberglass!

Fiberglass all cured.

Note the curved clamp on the top.  This was done to squeeze the fiberglass to a uniformly flat flange that will be used to attach to the rabbet in the back frame.

Back support removed from form.

Unfortunately, even though I used an epoxy release agent on the form, the material still stuck to the back support enough that it tore away from the form when the cured fiberglass was pulled away.  It’s not a huge problem, I can easily put another cover on the form should I make another chair.

Fiberglass back support attached to the Back frame.

Note that I used tee nuts attached to the fiberglass ‘flange’.  They had to be trimmed to flatten the outside to get them to fit within the rabbet but this also prevented the nuts from spinning when the screws were tightened after upholstering the back support.

That’s pretty much it!  I did bring the pieces to a professional upholstery shop, I know my limitations!

Take care!