Jillian asked me to make her a ring box a few weeks back, and I finally got around to it over the new year holiday. Aesthetically, its pretty simple, little more than a hollowed out cylinder with a dome lid made from Zebrawood. Executing the design I had in my mind turned out to be more difficult that I expected. Since this and end-grain piece, I couldn’t use my chuck in the expanding mode like I normally do. Thus this piece became my first forte into jam chucks.
The two jam chucks worked fine, but I was a little apprehensive at first, as mental images of the work launching across the shop ran through my head. By far, the biggest difficulty I had, was due to the scale of the work. My carbide turning tools have fairly thick tips, and while hollowing I ran into some issue with the heel rubbing the work, and thus preventing the cutting edge from engaging the work. To remedy this problem I had to raise the tool rest well above center. This gave the cutting edge the clearance it needed to work, but essentially turned it into a negative rake scrapper, and thus required me to take light cuts.
It was finished with two thin coats of de-waxed shellac, followed by a quick buffing with wax. It was quick and easy to apply, and resulted in a mild sheen that emphasized the unique grain structure of the wood. Jillian was very happy with the finished result, so I must have done something right.
Sometimes the answer is staring you right in the face, but you won’t notice it till someone points it out; that’s what happened to me right after Christmas. Jillian had gotten me some Kant-twist clamps, and I was struggling with where to store them in my increasingly congested shop. My mom walked into the shop as asked what I was doing, and after a short conversation she said why not put them there, point to an area under some shelving.
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While I love having a shop, one of the few things that I don’t like about mine is the lighting. It’s a 2 car garage with no windows, and while I’ve upgraded the lighting over the years, ceiling lights are only capable of so much. For example, if I’m turning a deep wood bowl, its hard to see the tip of the cutting tool. This is potentially dangerous because you have a higher chance of a catch when you can’t see what you are doing. On my mill, safety is less of a concern, but not being able to see the work, can turn a simple task into a choir.
The best way to fix this type of issue is to use task lights, so you can aim the light right where you need it most. Task lights range in price from “um OK”, to “holly hell”. Decent lights that use incandescent bulbs start around $50, and models that use LED lights seem to hover around $200. If I was spending 8 hours a day 5 days a week standing at a machine I’d probably just buy a good light. However, I’m a hobbyist and probably spend no more than 4 hours a week in the shop on average, so I wanted a cheaper solution. Continue Reading…
I wanted to make a family member something special for their home, to help give it some character. Plus, something hand crafted is much cooler than a gift card. The bowl started out as a chunk of Black Walnut burl, that contained a hefty amount of sapwood. Though the form is simple, this was my most challenging project to-date. Because the blank contained so much sapwood, and sapwood is a different density than heartwood, it was severely out of balance through most of the turning process. Additionally the difference in hardness between the two woods also made the blank hard to turn. Overall, I’m very happy with the final product.
Last Christmas, I made Jillian the scrap wood table for her station at work. This year I wanted to make her something as well, but hopefully a lot less time consuming. I decided to make a small bowl, that she could fill with candy and set on-top of the table. I decided to use a nice black walnut burl blank I picked up several weeks ago to make the bowl, as I thought it would go nicely with the walnut legs of table.
I knew she was going to be working late a few nights ago, so I thought it would be a good time to make the bowl. When I was rough milling the blank at the bandsaw, something didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. About 5 minutes into turning the blank I realized what was wrong, the blank was still wet. After verifying the blank was hovering around 30% with my moisture meter, I begrudgingly decided to rough turn the bowl and set it aside. This Christmas present will just have to be a belated one.
While turning the bowl, I realized this was a milestone event for me; my first “green” wood turning. I now see why people enjoy turning green wood. Turning it with my carbide tools required a lot less effort, and it produced nice ribbons in stead of the dust I normally get. I must have been enjoying my self to much, because I had another milestone event in my turning career, in this case a bad catch. While I was hollowing out the inside, the tool dug in, and was ripped out of my hands. Thankfully, I escaped injury, and the bowl only sustained minor damage, that I was able to clean up without to much effort.
