Finally finished

The engraving was done by another local turner and final assembly was done yesterday morning, not a moment too soon.
A quick sanding to remove some of the smoke residue and a quick coat of oil completed the job.











Assembly on this one was a bit easier, a coat of oil and placing the rods in the base. We thought about drilling holes in the sides of both masks for ribbon but eventually decided against it.












We also turned a heart shaped bowl for my neighbor's wife. I cut the heart shape before turning and the turned it as I would turn a square or natural edge bowl.

















Bottom view.


















Side view. It was left a little thicker than I would normally turn. There is a slight recurve on the wings to give it a bit more dynamic shape.

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Gift giving.

The presents for my neighbor's sons are mostly complete. The football was turned, hollowed, glued together, turned again, and finally carved. The football is Russian Olive, the base is Magnolia, and the stand is pine.











The masks are Birdseye Maple, turned, cut, and burned. I think the base is Basswood, the metal rods are 1/4" aluminum.

Both bases will be laser engraved with a personal message.

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Masks part II

A little more work on the comedy/tragedy masks tonight. The tenon was removed, the bottom tried and turned away and the outside sanded smooth.












The piece was then taken to the band saw and cut in half. I had to make a second cut to even up both halves. They're now within 1/8" of each other in width and length.


















The bottom was left thicker than I wanted, the wood was oriented end grain and the dry hard maple was very difficult to cut. On the plus side it leaves us a little more meat to drill the mounting holes.

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Olive the other reindeer

I picked up some Olive from a friend last weekend. Tonight I started roughing out some of the pieces. This is 1 medium sized log cut into 3 sections.










The sections were all mounted between centers and rough turned on the outside. They're temporarily stored in a garbage bag and will be rough hollowed in the next few days.










The rest of my night was spent helping my neighbor with some Christmas presents. They'll both be very personalized to match the personalities and hobbies. The older boy is into drama so were making a pair of drama masks. To do this we turned a modified cone that we'll cut in half to give us the 2 masks that we need.








We talked about leaving them solid but I wanted to have them be closer to actual masks so we ended up hollowing out the form so they're about 1/2" thick. We still have a bit more turning to do then we can sand them and cut them in half.













We're still talking about how to do the faces. I don't think we should cut out the eyes and mouth, I'm leaning towards some relief carving, i think he's leaning towards doing the faces via woodburning.

For the younger son we'll be making a football. We may end up leaving it solid but I'm thinking it should be hollowed in 2 halves as it represents a lightweight ball.

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