Keith Gotschall demo

Saturday was the Keith Gotschall demo at the Arizona Woodturners Association. We had about 90 people in attendance, 75% of which were AWA members. We usually do 2 of these all day demonstrations each year, one in the spring and another in the fall.










Keith was a very good demonstrator. He was informative and very knowledgable but also didn't talk down to the audience. He did 4 projects over the course of the day and flowed easily from one project to the next. Short of a lathe, a chuck, a grinder, and a turning smock he was fully prepared and well supplied.










His first project was a multi axis bowl. It's started as a spindle project and was used to demonstrate basic turning technique (beads, coves, skew, rubbing the bevel).













The blank was prepared in such a way that after the spindle portion was complete it was split in 2 pieces and then oriented in side grain orientation and the wings and bowl portion turned. The whole project was also used to demonstrate the proper way to cut with the grain direction.












The next project was a small salt shaker. It's turned end grain in 2 pieces. The body was hollowed with a spindle gouge in a technique called back-cutting, I'll have to give it a try sometime.

















The unique part of this project is the use of the finished project. It doesn't have holes in the top like a normal salt shaker. It also doesn't have a mechanism like a normal pepper grinder. The hole in the bottom is at the top of an inverted cone. As the salt shaker is shaken up and down a small amount of salt manages to fall through the hole in the bottom and onto the plate.













Third was an off center plate with a series of beads on the top and the bottom. The grooves were highlighted by pressing a small piece of Purpleheart into the groove while it was spinning. The friction and heat darkened each of the grooves slightly.













The back side also has some offset beads as well as some decorative beads that help disguise the final chucking method. I'm not a big fan of the final form but I think the technique is interesting and is something I can see myself playing with in the future.













Last up was a best perfect sphere. I've turned my share of spheres but the technique he used was different than my method. You can't argue with his results. It's very nearly perfect, 30 seconds of sanding would have made it absolutely perfect.













While there a fellow club member gifted me with some Desert Ironwood. I don't have any projects in mind at the moment but in grateful that he thought of me.

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Wood of Life

The February President's challenge is lidded boxes. I've had a few ideas in my head but I've run out of time. This was not my intended finished product but it's pretty close in spirit.










This spherical box is made from a portion of a Lignum Vitae (translated as Wood of Life) blank I purchased at the local Woodcraft. It was actually labeled as Olive but I knew that wasn't right. The employee at the register agreed that it was Lignum Vitae and agreed to double check on the price. Oddly it wasn't a size available in the catalog or in the computer so he had to check with the owner. They ended up ended up taking $15 off the price marked for Olive. Even so it is still quite expensive, about $40 a board foot.




I also made a matching ring stand out of a different piece of Lignum Vitae. I've demonstrated my technique for turning these rings before, including this past Saturday at the Southern Arizona Woodturners Association, SAZWA.









I intended to hand chase threads to get the box to thread together but my attempts to hand chase were less than successful. In the end I abandoned that idea and went with a standard tenon and recess joint.









I also worked on sanding a 3 piece hollow form set in Maple Burl. I turned these pieces throughout the day at the Woodcraft event a couple weeks ago.










There's a U.S. quarter for scale. These are the first turnings from my big burl score last year about this time. I still need to do some more sanding, I'd have much less hand work had I sanded them in the lathe while they were being turned but I always say that people want to watch somebody turn, not watch somebody sand.

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Spherical box

This morning i turned a near perfect spherical box in Box Elder with natural red staining. Roughly 3 1/2" diameter.

















The walls could be thinner and the joint could be tighter but overall I'm pretty happy. This was turned this afternoon without any templates or other guides. The inside was not sanded and was turned completely freehand.











The outside was also turned freehand using a set of wooden cup chucks I made myself. A fun little project that can be done in about an hour and requires only a couple basic tools (bowl gouge, spindle gouge, spindle roughing gouge, scraper, parting tool).


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Demonstrations

I'm certain I'll be demonstrating for at least 2 clubs next year, possibly more. I've already started to run possible demo topics through my head. The 3 I have in my head are:

1) Lidded boxes - 2 or 3 styles of lidded boxes. Likely a small round bottom box with a contrasting inlay around the lid and a 3 sided box with a twist (normally part of my multi axis demo).

2) Spheres - turning a perfect freehand sphere and variations of offset spheres.

3) Coring with the McNaughton Center Saver.

4) Something else?

Opinions?

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Local woods only

1 quick photo of something I've been playing with the last couple of nights. I don't want to give too many details yet, I am willing to say that these are for our club's August President's Challenge - Local woods only.

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Fun with spheres

I've had this idea in my head for a couple weeks now.  Tonight I had to give it a try.  I started by turning a sphere.  The blank was cut slightly longer than the width (3 5/8" long, 3 1/4" wide) and mounted between centers.

The blank was turned to a cylinder and layout lines were made.  The important line is the one in the middle, the others were no measured, just drawn on as a guide.

The corners are knocked off back to the center line.  This is where the bulk of the material will be removed.  Almost no material will be removed at the center line as that is the largest diameter of the sphere.

Each side is then turned to a half sphere shape.  I prefer to do the left hand side first because it's my weak side and I can better match the curve on the right hand side.

A couple more cuts and the basic sphere shape has been formed.

The blank is then rotated 90 degrees and put between wooden drive centers.  If you look at this photo closely you can see the "shadow" of the nubs left by the drive center on the original axis and the rest of the wood to be removed to make this a perfect sphere.

The sphere is repeatedly repositioned on 3 axis (X, Y, and Z) so the entire surface can be trued.  Here you can see that the sphere is on the Z axis.  The X axis is noted by the single line on the top.  The Y axis is the double line on the near side.  The blank is turned on eash axis about 3 times, each time smaller and smaller cuts are taken.  If a cut is too deep the entire surface will have to be turned down to that new depth. 

Once turning is complete the entire surface is sanded with each grit. Once per axis per grit.

Next the sphere is moved off azis and a groove is turned.  The was repeated after rotating the sphere 90 degrees.

There are some flaws. Chipout on some of the edges where the wood was unsupported during the cut and a couple of areas where the soft wood was crushed by the wooden drive centers.

Off center sphere

Terry was pretty close in describing how I turned the piece from my last post.  The sphere was roughed between centers and I then used cup chucks on each end to fine tune it.  The nose of this live center cap was flattened and used to apply pressure from the tailstock to the cup center used to drive the piece from the headstock.

The cup center for the headstock is some scrap that was screwed to a faceplate.

There is a slight cup in the center, the size isn't really important, as long as the sphere makes contact around the rim before it bottoms out in the cup.

The cup was then moved off center by simply unscrewing all of the screws but one and then rotating the faceplate before driving them back in but in different positions.  This effectively moves the sphere off center so the V groove can be turned.

Lastly a jam chuck was turned so the piece could be hollowed through the opening created by the groove.  The fit has to be pretty good, like the cup center above the contact has to be around the outside before the piece bottoms out in the center.  Green wood was used because it's a little more flexible.







Below is a quick video I took showing the cup center on the faceplate in the off center position.  It's a very simple solution that I picked up from Christian Burchard.  The flat on the face of the live center cap was just wide enough to apply the pressure needed to drive the sphere.

Laser guided Pacman

I still need to make an actual jig to measure the bottom of bowls and hollow forms, in the meantime I used the laser from my hollowing system to temporarily locate the bottom of this hollow form.  When I get around to building the actual jig it will be carefully setup to measure exactly at center height.

The laser point was carefully aligned with the end of the cutting tip.  Where the laser falls on the outside of the piece should be where the inside bottom of the hollow form is.  Assuming that the cutter is bottomed out and is on the center line (I'm holding in place with one hand and taking the photo with the other) it looks like I have about 3/8" left in the bottom.  Just enough to finish it off and make a slight concave spot for it to sit on.

Next up was a sample for what I might want to do on a larger scale.  I saw a photo of a similar piece during Christian Burchard's spheres demo at the 2011 Desert Woodturning Roundup.

Turning a near perfect sphere is much harder than I initially thought.  I used Christian's technique and got pretty close but it's definitely not perfect but it was pretty close.

Can you guess how it was hollowed and how the groove was cut in the middle (or is it the other way around).  Also how was it held during these operation(s).  I'll reveal how I did it in a couple of days, after some guesses have been made.