Day 293: Digging out

Here's a quick photo of the aftermath of yesterday's marathon turning session.  It doesn't actually look that bad in this photo but it doesn't show the pile behind the lathe, behind the dust collector, and behind the tablesaw.

There was also a smaller pile near the garage door, this pile was swept up from the driveway and was mostly from the chainsaw prep on the blanks.

This was the pile my wife saw last night that she thought was such a mess.  Little did she know!

It took about an hour to sweep up and vacuum.  I filled my green yard waste bin, borrowed my neighbor's green bin and filled it as well. 

Tomorrow I'm headed to another turners house to give him a lesson.  He's been to my shop a couple of times and is wanting a lesson in his own shop, on his own lathe, with his own tools to see if we can sort out the problems he's been having.  Wish me luck.

Day 292: Before and After

2 Mesquite blanks and 3 African Sumac blanks.  All roughed with the chainsaw and ready to go on the lathe.

4 hours and 15 bowls later the shop is an absolute mess and I didn't even make a dent in my woodpile.  My back hurts, my feet hurt, and my head hurts but I'm happy.

Day 291: Potpourri

Today was a mixture of everything, I finished turning my closed ended pen this morning, worked on the 2011 Desert Woodturning Roundup demonstration schedule, then I cleaned up the shop.  A friend then came over to have me cut up some wood, which required a trip to Ace Hardware to get my chainsaw chains sharpened.  Lastly I did a bit of turning tonight but both projects I worked on ended up in the trash.  A multi axis hollow form that I may try again, and another textured spline box that I ruined when I cut through the side of the box and into the spline tenon.  Not a good way to end the day.  Hopefully tomorrow will turn out better.

Day 290: Textured Spline Box

I wasn't sure what I was going to work on tonight so I finally decided to give the box I worked on earlier this week another try.  This time successfully.

I also textured the outside with a wire brush hoping that it would hide the joint a little better than it did.  I wasn't sure the Mesquite would texture very well, I thought it was probably too hard but I was wrong.  I'll probably try texturing Mesquite this way again.

The trick to doing this box was realizing that I couldn't turn a tenon.  Once I realized that the answer was pretty simple.  I turned a recess in each half and then turned a spline that fit into both recesses and acts as the tenon.  Another method would be to use magnets to hold the 2 halves together, I may have to give that a try sometime. 

Day 289: Back to the grind

Bernie came back over tonight, he was having issues sharpening today and wanted me to take a look at his tools and his grinder/jig setup.  After getting a look at his tools and setup he had 2 problems.  1)  His jigs weren't setup properly.  They need to be directly below the center of the grinding wheel and the one on the finer grit wheel was at least 1/2" to the left of center and also alightly askew.  The jig on the courser wheels was pretty close but needed a bit of adjusting too.  2)  He was grinding on the nose of the gouge way too much and on the sides (wings) not nearly enough.  This left him with gouges that were pretty much impossible to use. 

Together we spent about and hour disassembling his grinder setup and getting everything lined up and then secured again.  Then another 30 minutes or so shaping and sharpening his tools back to a usable shape.  I think we got his tools back into shape and we went over the sharpening process so he should be able to keep them properly sharpened in the future.

Day 288: Bernie

My friend Bernie came over tonight to have me cut up some wood he had (Oak, Mesquite, and Aligator Juniper) and to turn and core one of the chunks of African Sumac we got together last night.  Here's Bernie shaping the outside of th blank.  It started out about 14" diameter and finished up about 13 1/4".

Bernie doen't have a coring setup so I used my Mcnaughton set to core out 2 blanks for a total of 3 bowls from this log section.  These should be really nice when they're finished and get their suntan to turn them red.  I still have the other half of the log for now.  Bernie has indicated he'd like to rough and core it too, so I'll set it aside until we can get that done.

Day 287: The African Queen

I got an email this morning from a woman that said she had an African Sumac tree that had been cut down and wanted to know if wanted any of the wood in return for a finished piece.  I gave her a call this afternoon to talk it to see if I could get an idea how much wood there was and if it was big enough to make it worth my while.  She told me that the tree had been at least 2 stories tall with very large branches and was about 14" diameter.  Knowing how often people under or over estimate the size of wood I expected the pieces to be either 10-12" diameter or 16-18" diameter.  Long story short, myself and 2 other turners drove to her house to find a whole pile of wood, from 1" branches all the way up to the crotch shown here.  It should produce a bowl 19-20" diameter.  The 3 of us did some serious damage to the pile but there's still a ton left, including several pieces in the 12"-14" range.

African Sumac happens to be one of my favorite woods.  It's pale pink when fresh cut but takes on a gorgeous red color after exposure to UV light.  A couple days in direct sunlight.  I don't believe that the wood we got tonight will have the curl that this platter has, but it should still be very nice when finished.