Day 111: Success

Ornament success tonight.  I left it a little thicker tonight and took my time making the offset cuts.  I'm pleased with the results and hope that the recipient will be too.

This was turned on 3 different axes, a total of 8 times.  The copper eyelet on the top is hand made from a short piece of copper wire I took from a lenght of romex I had laying around.

Inside view with base.  The "trunk" on the base was drilled out to reduce weight even further. 












I almost always have my MP3 player on the stereo in the shop.  Sometimes it's music, other times it's an audio book. Starting tonight I'm going to try to feature something I listened to while working on today's project.. 

Song of the night:
Dave Matthews, Tripping Billies

Day 110: Ornament

I haven't felt well all weekend, our family has a head cold going around and it was my turn so my shop time was limited yet again.

What little time I did have I decided to use on the Christmas tree ornament I'm planning to do for our club's holiday party.  This stylized Christmas tree is hollowed and turned on 3 centers.

Unfortunately it snapped off when I was almost complete.  I'll have to start over again one of these nights.

Day 109: Finished

I finished the Sumac bowl I've been working on today.  I'm pretty happy with the way it came out, it's a little thinner in the bottom than I would have liked but it has a nice weight thanks to the thick rim.

A quick shot of the bottom.  There's a 3" flat spot on the bottom for it to rest on but no real foot.  This piece now needs a couple of days in the sun to change colors.

Day 108: Sumac continued

More work on the African Sumac bowl tonight.  It's been sanded and the first coat of oil applied to the outside.

A closer look at the curl on this piece.  This will become more distinct after the bowl changes color.

The bowl was then flipped and the rim trued and profiled.  I'll probably turn the inside some time tomorrow.

Day 107: African Sumac

Once again limited shop time tonight.  12 hour days are work aren't much fun.

This is an African Sumac roughout from a couple of years ago.  I decided to work on finishing it.  Tonight was the first step, truing up the tenon and the outside.

 One of the things that I love about African Sumac is that it changes color with exposure to UV light.  This piece never saw direct sunlight, just incident daylight and artificial lights in my shop so the color change isn't as dramatic as a couple of days in the sun would be but the change is still there.  This photo shows the UV exposed surface on the left and the fresh cut surface on the right.

10-15 minutes later the outside is trued and ready to sand.

A slightly closer view.  This piece has a bit of very fine curl running through it.  This will show much better once the piece is finished.

Here's a piece of African Sumac from the same location that I finished a couple of years ago.  The curl on this piece is much more dramatic than the bowl I'm currently working on.  The color in this photo is a little light.  It's a bit darker than this in real life.

Day 106: Evolution

I hate to sound like a broken record but I had almost no shop time tonight.  5 minutes total and that was spent doing a little clean up.  We're very busy at work right now, which is better than the alternative I suppose.

This is the next step in my locking box I posted back on day 91.  The idea is to incorporate a combination into the piece so that it can only be opened if lid is moved in the correct sequence.

Another possible combination, in reality the combination is nothing more than a simple maze with a start and a finish point, several twists and tuns and a few dead ends along the way.

Day 105: Lidded blow up

Another piece of olive tonight, this one has been drying for several years and was roughed out about 10 days ago, back on day 94. 

I wasn't sure I was going to have enough meat left to do the 3 sided twisted box I had planned and it turns out I was right.

I cut through the side on one of the 3 faces.  Better that this happened in my shop tonight than in a demon in front of dozens of people.