Back to the drawing board

The club challenge for October in inside-out. I had an idea to incorporate my multi axis turning on the inside face. So I chucked up a piece of Home Depot redwood and turned a prototype.















I had to leave the ends square so I had some area to glue once its turned inside out. Normally I would turn all the way to the ends of the blank. Because this is only a prototype I didn't do the preliminary glue up.














Instead i turned it as a solid piece and then quartered it on my band saw before turning the sections inside out. The results weren't what I had in mind so it went in the recycling bin and I went back to the drawing board.














My second idea was more successful and closer to what I had in mind as my concept. I started by gluing 4 pieces together with a paper joint and turning a wide cove.











The paper glue joints were the split apart and the 4 pieces turned inside out and glued together permanently. I opted to turn on 4 axes with a 90 degree twist to match the 4 diamond shaped openings formed by the inside-out process.









It's not perfect but it proves the concept. The glue joints could be much better; that's one of the reasons I'm not a segmented turner. I'm also not sure how this concept could be incorporated into a finished piece. For now I'm just happy that I was able to get my proof of concept done.

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Clamshell box

Walnut clamshell box.













Turned for the "Walnut" President's challenge.  Each half turned from a 4/4 walnut board roughly 3" wide.  4/4 isn't thick enough to turn a traditional box so I cut 2 pieces from adjoining sections of the board.











Side view.


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Preview

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Challenge accepted.

Tonight I finished the Eucalyptus hollow form.  I put it back between centers and took another cut from the mid point up to the rim.  This helped reduce the weight but it's still not where I'd like it to be.  Unfortunately this wood is very dense so a ultra lightweight form isn't in the cards.

This is one of my favorite parts of the whole process.  The piece has been sanded and I've started to apply the first coat of oil.  Now is the first time I get to see what the final piece will actually look like.

Top view showing the fake opening.

Bottom view.  The hollowing was done through the bottom and was then plugged with another piece of the same blank.  The grooves on the bottom help disguise the joint.

Profile view.  The sapwood on this side is lighter colored, with much less red.  It also has some small voids and a fair amount of crystallized resin.  The voids are helpful to judge the wall thickness.

Finished piece in my photo booth.  The color here is pretty accurate, and it's all natural.  The oil finish is nothing more than Watco Danish Oil.  They make several varieties, including Walnut, Cherry, and Mahogany but I always opt for the "Natural" variety.

Bottoming out

The President's Challenge for June is "Hollow Forms". Like most of the other challenges I've done I take the challenge part literally. I've done a bunch of hollow forms over the years but I've never done one that is hollowed from the bottom. Tonight I chucked up a chunk of figured Eucalyptus and went to work.








This is my progress so far. It doesn't look like I got much done but I'm actually mostly done. I may take one more pass on the outside to reduce the weight, other than that all I have left is the sanding, removing the nub from the bottom, and finishing.














I wanted the hole in the top to be impossibly small, it's about 3/8" on a form almost 5 1/2" across. I only know of 1 person that could possibly pull off hollowing this form through that opening, David Ellsworth. I might be able to do it through a hole about 5/8" but that's significantly larger than this hole (0.11 square inches vs 0.30 square inches).












Bottom view. I still have to remove the nub. Hollowing was done through a hole slightly over 1" diameter. Before I started I parted off the bottom of the form to maintain the best grain match possible. The joint will be hidden in a series of small grooves on the base.

The color should end up like the first photo once sanded and the oil finish has been applied.

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Mega catch up

 It's been a busy week, time for another catch up post.

First up is some prep for an upcoming demonstration.  I'm headed to Idaho for vacation in about 3 weeks and will be doing a demonstration at the Woodcraft Guild in Idaho Falls on 7/7/11.

 I'll be doing my multi axis demo, the main feature being my multi axis lidded box with a twist.  As always I prepare the blank ahead of time by turning the inside.  This is primarily to save time but is also because the accuracy needed for the tenon would be hard to do with an audience.

 Next up are a few birdhouses.  The last couple of posts have been their construction.  Here are the finished products.

Some may notice that the 3rd one (Ornamental Yew) is missing.  It had an unfortunate accident while doing the final sanding.  I forgot how thin it was near the bottom and when I tapped on it to seat it on a jam chuck I broke the bottom out of it.  I made this body as a replacement on Friday night and gave the woman that ordered it her choice of the 3.  She picked this one and it's now living happily in her living room.

 This piece was boxed so it can be delivered to the 25th annual American Association of Woodturners symposium in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

 The President's Challenge for June is "Toys".  I'm working on a couple of things, first is a multi axis magic wand.  Next is a Tippy top.  This top is supposed to flip over and spin on the stem.  This one doesn't quite work right but I'm not sure what's wrong.  I'll probably do a couple more to see if I can figure out what went wrong.  I suspect it's too top heavy.

 This afternoon I turned a Kendama.  Kendamas are like the old ball and cup toy but a bit more extreme.  There are at least 4 surfaces to catch the ball one, each of the 3 cups and the point.

xAll pieces were turned out of Red Cedar.  I didn't have any plans and I couldn't find any dimensions on the internet so I had to base my design on a couple of photos.  I'm sure that the dimensions are incorrect. I can now see from additional photos that the cups on the side should be different sizes.  I also had some extra wood so I turned another sphere (above).

Last I had a custom job to turn a spindle and a drop finial for a music stand.  The customer supplied the wood and a poor quality photo to use as the template.  The photo was similar to the photo at left.  I didn't have to copy it exactly but it was used as inspiration for the piece.  The drop final was inspired by the bottom 2" of the spindle only in reverse and slightly different because it needed to taper down to a very small diameter in a relatively short distance.

This post is actually a couple of evenings work put together. On Saturday night I did a new handle for the gavel. It's almost exactly the same length, it's just thicker and the threads have a slightly different configuration. The length was dictated by the length of the blank, it could stand to be another inch or two longer but this was almost all I have of this species.

On Sunday I decided I wanted to turn a matching sound block. I had saved a small piece of the matching wood just for this purpose. It was Approx. 3" X 3" X 1/4" so I knew I'd want to inlay it into another blank.

My first choices were Walnut and Mesquite but I wanted more contrast. I ended up selecting some Holly I've had for a while.

I wasn't sure how I was going to shape the profile, I ended up doing the same basic profile as the gavel itself. The underside of the Holly is hollow so there is a bit of a drum effect

Threaded gavel

For this month's President's Challenge - "Attention getters" I knew I wanted to do a gavel but I wanted to do it a little bit different.  The handle is secured to the head with hand chased threads.  Step 1 was to drill and then hand chase the threads in the head.  The blank is 5" long and just under 3" square. 

The head was then mounted between centers and the profile turned.  I found a PDF online with a profile I liked and based my design on that profile.  The layout was pretty simple just a little bit of measuring to make sure things were symmetrical.

The handle was then turned and the threads hand cut on the end.  This is endgrain orientation so threading was more difficult.  I soaked the threads in superglue to reinforce the short grain fibers.

The profile of the handle was turned next.  I wish I'd left it a little thicker, I may end up turning another one leaving a little more meat but I hesitate because of the end grain threads.

Last the nubs were sanded off of both ends of the head and the butt end of the handle before a coat of oil was wiped on.  I plan to turn a sounding block out of the same wood but that's a project for another day.