TWStud's Musings » Woodturning

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!!!

Finally framed the Wall Art I made for Christmas…

TWStud — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 21:18:20 +0000

I finally got around to making the frame for the Wall Art I made for Christmas. The frame is made of 24 segments of Maple, glued together into a 24 side polygon and then routed on the CNC router to make a nice, lightweight, round frame. I’m very pleased with the way it came out.

Wall Art with segmented Maple Frame

Christmas 2021

TWStud — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 14:55:00 +0000

This Christmas I decided that I would try to make all of the gifts. Other than a few minor purchases, I came close. Of course I had to start working on these in October!!!

Here is this year’s line up:

Continuing the tradition of the annual collection of Ornaments:

Then, on with the gifts…

Advent Calendar, given in November. Santa moves across the board on each day of December.

Wall Art, ready to be framed.

Sign to go on my granddaughter’s playroom or bedroom door.

Two sided maze. Ball falls through to other side to continue the path to finish.

Cheeseboard to match kitchen decor.

Carved/Turned Box. Made with Corian and Cherry wood.

Anniversary Gift

TWStud — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 13:07:21 +0000

For our anniversary this year, I decided to combine two skills I’ve been refining this last year: Wood turning and CNC Carving.

I made this turned Box with a Corian Carved lid. The box is made from Zebra wood.

Carved/Turned Box with Lid On

Carved/Turned Box, side view

Carved/Turned Box, inside view

New Carved Top Boxes, now made at LHV

TWStud — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 19:59:13 +0000

Now that I have a CNC Router at the Little House in the Village, it’s time to see what I can do with it!

So, I decided to make a Corian Carved top on a wood turned box as a gift for one of my sisters.

Completed Carved top box.

Magnolia Box opened.

Carving the Corian top.

Turned Cherry box showing inside and back side of carved top.

This came out so well, I had to do another!

Turned Box with Carved top

CircleFish Carved Corian top, Maple wood turned box

Christmas 2020

TWStud — Fri, 25 Dec 2020 14:58:32 +0000

In keeping with tradition, here are a selection of photos of things I made as Christmas presents this year, starting with the ornaments…

Bird Feeder Ornament, feeding those hungry birds in the winter! Wood is native Holly. Design inspired by work done by Frank Penta.

Bird is nesting inside and, of course, that IS a Christmas Tree inside the top of the Pagoda roof.

Look closely, you can see the bird nesting inside.

Next, the ‘usual’ collection of gifts…

Box to keep Finley’s Things. Sides are Ash, top is Wenge with Holly Inlay.

Front Corner showing grain matching.

Back corner showing grain matching.

Lift the lid and you’ll find Walnut lining with a surprise! Random tracks from an SD card will play every time the lid is opened. Currently the tracks are recorded animal and insect sounds.

The liner is removable including the false bottom.

With the false bottom removed, the custom electronics, including the SD card, is accessible. Note the wireless Charging circuit on the left side. This will keep the battery charged without wires when the box is placed on its stand.

For Kerry, I made a large, shallow bowl I’ve been wanting to make for some time. I had to wait until I had refined my Woodturning skills enough to have the confidence to take it on. I’m pleased with the result:

Large Bowl for Kerry

Showing back side of bowl after buffing.

Here’s the bowl right after turning the bottom first. Note texturing inside the foot.

Bowl right after turning the inside. Freshly oiled with Walnut Oil, it will need to cure for a few days before final buffing.

Bowl Rim detail.

Bowl Lamination Detail. The woods are Cherry, Purple Heart, and Walnut with dyed veneers between the layers.

Finally, here is how you deal with overly long handles on your turning tools. I couldn’t get enough sweep with the original handle to turn the inside of Kerry’s bowl. Solution? Cut it off! I’ve since replaced the wooden handle with an adjustable Aluminum handle. Much better!

and have to make some Yard Art!

Yard art for Kate & Paul’s place.

Some yard art I made for Clare and Finley’s house.

Birthday Present

TWStud — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 20:26:37 +0000

New birthday present to show off!

Cheese Board with well for Cheese Knife.

Close up of Knife for Cheese Board.

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!

Sphere turning class

TWStud — Sat, 18 May 2019 13:31:20 +0000

I attended a workshop, hosted by the Chapel Hill Woodturner’s Club, that showed how to turn a perfect sphere on a wood lathe. At first I was interested primarily to learn the mechanics of how that could be done, but, then, after learning how to do it and seeing the beautiful, perfect, results, I was hooked! I love turning Spheres!

Here are some of my samples:

A collection of Spheres I turned as a result of the Sphere turning class. Left to right, the first is Mahogany, then Cherry, then, in the back is Spalted Tamarind, and finally, in the foreground is a lamination made of Paduak, yellow Mora, with a green veneer separating the woods.

The Spalted Tamarind was a gift to my wife, and the Paduak, with its single band, was a gift for my granddaughter’s first birthday.

Goblet turning workshop

TWStud — Sat, 23 Mar 2019 13:41:59 +0000

I attended a special woodturning workshop showing various methods for turning goblets. The workshop was hosted by the Chapel Hill Woodturner’s Club, and taught three different methods for creating one, two, and three piece goblets.

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.