Woodworking expo

Saturday is the annual woodworkers expo at the local Woodcraft. Our club will have a booth and I'll be there all day demonstrating and promoting the club. In order to demonstrate I need some wood prepared so I cut up a chunk of Sissoo tonight. I got 6 blanks out of the log section, I'll probably take the 4 smaller pieces, leaving the 2 larger crotch pieces to work on at home as I think they're better quality than I'd normally use to demo.













I'm also planning to do a trio of mini hollow forms. I've chosen to use a small piece of Maple Burl for the blanks. This is actually a small cutoff from the giant Maple Burl I bought almost exactly a year ago.


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Demo prep

I'm demonstrating lidded boxes on Saturday at the Arizona Woodturners Association. I plan to demo 3 different styles, first is a small round box with a contrasting inlay around the rim, a simplified version of Cindy Drozda's "Fabulous Finial Box". Second will be what I call a hidden joint spline box. It's a pretty unique box, done side grain rather than end grain and with a joint that is contoured to match the grain of the wood. Last (if there's time) will be what I consider to be my signature lidded box, 3 sided with a 120 degree twist.






I've got most of my prep work already done, tonight I gathered up some samples and my prepared blanks. Next I need to gather up my tools and and accessories and I should be good to go.


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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.

Catch up

 A bit of catch up and picture dump tonight.  This is going to be a long entry with limited notes.

This blank is Chinese Elm from my neighbor's tree.  It died last fall and had to come down last week.  This is the top part of the trunk, it split into 4 branches at this point.

 Alternate view.

I only took it as far as shaping the outside.  It's been coated with Anchorseal and set aside for the time being.

Alternate view.  The shape will be refined as work progresses.

Ahead of my Tucson demo I decided to do a little practice turning.

A simple spindle turned on 2 parallel axis.  This gives a pinched oval shape to the piece.

Next was another parallel 2 axis piece.  All 3 sections have a circular cross section, only the center section is offset.

Saturday was my demo for the Southern Arizona Woodturners Association in Tucson.  This was my first visit to this club and I did my multi axis demo.  Over the course of 2 1/2 hours I did 6 multi axis projects.  2 parallel axis spindles to warm up, a Mark St. Leger style multi axis final jig, a 3 sided lidded box with a twist, and finally a pair of multi axis pendants.

While there we stopped into the local Woodcraft, my only purchase was a Woodriver brand Stebcenter.  I've been playing with it for the last couple of day and I really like it so far and at $20 it's a bargain.

Sunday morning started with a small Olive hollow form. Approx. 3 1/4" X 2 1/2".

Top view.

Profile view.

That got me thinking, how fast could I turn a similar piece, start to finish.  I started at exactly  2:00

 At 2:10 I heard a somewhat familiar noise and stopped the lathe to find that I had cut through the sidewall near the bottom as I was shaping the outside.  I needed about 2 more minutes to finish shaping the outside and give it a quick sanding.

 Finished off the bottom but not yet sanded, no point sanding it at this time.

I wanted to check how I did inside, a little rough but pretty consistent down to the point where the inside gets bigger than the outside.  I could have gone a little deeper in the middle but a little more meat in the bottom isn't a bad thing as it helps keep it upright.

More tomorrow.

Demo prep

More demo prep tonight.  I'm doing a shop made jigs at demo, the same basic demo I did this past weekend at the Prescott Area Woodturners.  Depending on time I may do this jig, even though it's not on my handout.

The jig is simply some scrap wood.  2 tenons have been turned on one end, one on the center axis and another with the opposite end offset by about 3/16".  A 1/2" diameter hole is drilled through the center axis of the jig.  A tenon slightly larger than 1/2" diameter is turned on the finial blank.  The blank is driven into the jig using the tailstock.  The jig is then moved into the off-center axis and the end of the blank is turned (everything to the right of the sharp transition in this photo).

The jig is then moved to the center axis and the bottom of the finial is turned.  Once complete the finial can be cut free or a knockout rod can be used to remove the blank from the jig.

I also started my demo prep for Tucson on April 9th.  I'll be doing my multi axis demo with the main portion of the demo one of my multi-axis twisted lidded boxes.  This will be my 3rd demo in 5 weeks.















In order to save time I turn the inside of the box to completion.  Up to this point I follow pretty standard box making techniques (with the possible exception of leaving the blank square).  Tenons are turned on each end and then the blank is cut in half.  I leave the blank square to make this cut easier and safer and because the triangular cross section of the finished box can be larger than the largest possible cylinder.

Demo prep II

A few more sample jigs for my demo this weekend.

These jigs both thread onto the lathe.  The one on the left threads directly onto the spindle (1 1/4" X  8 TPI in my case)  I only threaded part way through this blank to make it "closed ended" as the drive portion in this case is the same diameter as the spindle.  The tailstock adapter was threaded and turned the other night.  The shoulder on the end was turned down to the same 1 1/4" diameter as the blank on the headstock.


These centers can be used to drive peppermill blanks, kaleidescope blanks, and similar objects.  The shoulders on each end are really to center the piece, the drive actually comes from the pressure between both ends.  The other advantage to using wood for the drive centers is that not only can they be custom fitted for a particular diameter but you can also turn right down and into the jig without damaging your tools.

Next up was another live center jig.  The blank was drilled, tapped and then the outside was turned as a reverse cone.











The inside was removed and the jig can now be used to drive spheres and help center and drive hollow forms.

Demo prep

2 weeks until my Prescott demo.  This one snuck up on me a bit with everything going on surrounding the DWR so I'm scrambling to get everything lined up and get my handout done.

I've chosen to do a demo on shop made jigs.  More specifically turning related jigs that you can make with stuff you probably already have laying around in your shop.  I'm planning to do 4 or 5 different jigs, 2 of which are similar to the jig at the left.  I call this a Mark St. Leger style compression jig.  A recess is turned on the face of the jig and a cut is made on the side so that as the jaws of the chuck are closed the wood will flex and compress and grip the piece to be turned.  In this case the recess has a slight concave shape to grip the outside of the ring and prevent it from coming out of the jig unexpectedly.