More bowls!

I need to think of more varied titles for my posts. One of these days.

Anywho... now that bowls have been made gifts of, I can post them without spoiling any surprises.

First, we have a cherry bowl:
Simple design, turned out of a solid piece of cherry. I liked the way the grain was going to look, so I didn't want to take away from it with a complex bowl shape. I think it worked well. 6 1/2 inches in diameter, by 1 1/2 inches tall. Finished with natural polyurethane for shine.

The nice thing about simple shapes is they sand out quickly and easily, unlike this next one...
The more complex shape meant more difficult sanding. As well as this being walnut, it took me a while to sand. But the reward is well worth the effort, in my opinion. One of my better bowls of late, in my opinion. This bowl is 7 inches in diameter, by 3 3/8 inches tall, turned from a block of laminated walnut, cut and stacked from a single board. Finished with polyurethane.

And then there's the last of the old stuff, I think. This one I actually turned last year, but it spent time as a dust collector on my shelf until a few months ago. I just didn't really like the shape. I had something in mind when I started turning away on it, but the wood had other ideas, and this is how it turned out:
While I don't are much for the shape, I do love the grain. Fortunately, someone else liked the shape, so I gave it to her.

Woodrotted cypress, with the bad wood picked and carved out to make cavities in the walls. 7 1/2 inches diameter by 5 1/8 inches tall, and finished with Polyurethane, of course.

Bowls posted... and now, a rant. Or just thoughts, or details to a plan... take it how you wish.

At this point, I'm not entirely sure when I'll do some more turning. I have two more that are in the process of being finished, (And they'll be posted soon, within a couple weeks.) but other than that... I don't know. I really have missed turning this past year, and it felt good to attack the lathe with the vigor of trying to make bowls for everyone by Christmas. I feel my best work comes when I'm making something specifically for someone, and each of the bowls I turned in the past month has been for someone.

However, two things happened while I was turning these bowls. One, I realized that my skill as a woodturner has sort of passed the level of equipment I have. My lathe is a benchtop Craftsman 12 inch swing by 36 inch bed lathe. It has stamped steel ways that the tool rest attaches to, which flex noticeably when I turn larger bowls. The amount of turning marks I have to sand out is annoying, no matter what I do to avoid them. I feel like I've done everything I can to improve my own skill, and now it's time to look at my equipment, and improve there.

The second thing that has happened, is the spindle bearings in the headstock of my lathe developed a small amount of play. Maybe they've always been like that, and I've never noticed, or maybe turning bowls that are 2 and 3 times larger than the lathe is designed for is taking it's toll. Either way, it has made it harder to make nice things.

And so, I come to a crossroads. I love my lathe, but it's also old. I bought it used, and it's showing its age. It's been a great machine to learn on, and I've done great things (to me, anyways) with it. But I think maybe it's time to upgrade to something a bit bigger, a bit better, and a bit shinier, and give the old one a well deserved retirement, or rebuild.

The problem with a new lathe is going to be finding a good one that runs off 110VAC, draws less than 15 amps, fits in the garage, and is affordable.

Until I find it, I'll keep turning on my old one.

Bowls!

That thing I do... y'know, the turning on the lathe, that bit that I haven't posted finished products from for over a year... Well! I got some, finally!

I've been far to busy riding my bikes, so the lathe has suffered some neglect this past year. But, motivation struck, and I turned 5 bowls over the past couple weeks, with amazing finishes, I dare say some of the best I've done so far.

And I'm not posting them yet. So sad.

What I am posting are two bowls that have been waiting in the wings, one since last year, and one from longer ago than that, both waiting for me to finish them, which I finally did this past week.

First, the oldest one:
Alder, with birch laminated to the outside. The alder wood started as a square, and the birch was glued on to each face, then turned. I didn't like the way the inside was turning out, as it was chipping fairly badly on the end grain sides at the birch joint. So, I shelved it for over 2 years, until one of my friends at work convinced me that I should pick it back up again.

About 6 months ago, I did, and after off and on working at it, it now stands finished, with one of the shiniest finishes I've done. It's 6 inches in diameter, by 2.5 inches tall, and finished with the usual natural flavor of polyurethane.

Lessons learned with this piece: I need to work on my centering when mounting the face plate, it really shows on segmented turnings like this. Also, end grain joints are a pain.

Next, a little piece of oak.
Turned from a piece of firewood found on the side of the road, I decided that since the bark was sticking so well, I'd leave it for a nice two-tone coloring, rather than turn all the way through it. Also, wood worm trails!

Gambel Oak, 3.5 inches in diameter, by 2.75 inches tall, finished with natural Polyurethane.

Stay tuned, there'll be more coming in the next week or so.

I got around to it!

Well, several round tuits, to be precise. Though, I had to make them. They started off rather square:

But fast forward through a few days, and here they sit:

Now to sand and finish them.

Experimentation.

So, it's been over a year since I've done any turning. Before hacking at blocks of wood with the lathe, I decided a warm up was in order, to see if I remembered how to make nice things. I figured, while I was at it, I'll try something new, and mount the log sideways, and turn it cross grain. Usually, I turn my laminated bowls cross grain, and raw logs get turned end grain.



I think it came out rather well.

TV Stand Entertainment Center Thinger.

The rare post! Run in fear!

So here's one project out of several that I've been working on; The TV stand. This is the biggest project I've done so far, and it's essentially finished now. There's one more thing that I have to do to it, but I have to build a three-ring binder type system to mount on the angled front piece on top, and it can be done later.



48 inches tall, 25 inches deep, and 56 inches wide. Constructed out of pre-joined pine, stained with an Early American flavor stain for color, and sealed with my usual glossy polyurethane. Exposed screw heads for character, and because Exe and I both agreed that the hole filler buttons look cheesy.

In regards to the screws: I know I could have joined all the pieces and eliminated the need for the screws altogether, (And I fully acknowledge it would look better) but there were two things working against me with that: I didn't have any bar clamps big enough, and I like to overbuild things. All the joints are glued and screwed. I sat on the top of this (And inside it too) and it never creaked.

All that said, this was fun to build. From concept to design to finished product, I think I have about 25-30 hours worth of work in it. I used pretty much every tool I had, got to use some techniques I haven't used for years, and a lot of the work was done using hand tools. I ran into problems and had to change the design slightly on the fly, or fudge out some math to make things work, but it's solving problems like those that I live for when I build things.

Now what should I build? I think a workbench for the garage is in order...

Just a teaser.

Yeah, I haven't been doing much in the way of artings. I've been too busy riding my bikes. But for the one or two people who may still look here, Here's a teaser:

Drying between coats.

Holy wooden projects, Batman!

Yeah, I've been lazy. I've got bowls done that just need to be photographed, and then posted about. All except for this one, which I hurried up and took pictures of before I gave it away to my roomie's parents... which was before Christmas... yeah, I've been lazy.

This is a bowl turned from a clear pine board, cut into squares and laminated before turning. It was an experiment, as I've been wanting to do some taller turnings, and this is the first one I've done. I don't remember the actual size, but it was between 4 and 5 inches tall, and roughly 7 inches in diameter. Finished with my usual combination of natural Danish Oil and polyurethane. If I had known it would turn out so light in color, I would have tried staining it, but as it is, it looks nice:


Next up is a project I became involved in at work. My boss brought in a chess table with a big nasty ugly crack right down the middle of the tabletop. My task was to fix it. I don't have any before pictures of it, but imagine a crack nearly 1/4 inch wide running with the grain along the entire width of the table, with evidence of glue having been poured into it in an effort to keep it from worsening, which failed.

I ultimately ended up disassembling the table completely, and finished the job that the table was trying to accomplish in the first place, splitting the table completely in half along the crack. I had to carve out all the old glue, sand down the joining areas, and save as many of the small chips of wood along the upper finished edge of the crack as I could. After all this, I put it on the press and joined the two halves together with generous amounts of Gorilla Glue.

Due to the different expansion rates of the wood in the center of the table versus the wood used for the border, the crack in the border did not close completely, though it was less than half the width it was. The crack across the chessboard portion closed up nicely, in comparison. I ended up puttying the cracks in the border, and staining the putty with a custom mixed stain to match the wood. After all this, I sanded the entire table top with 600 grit paper, and lacquered it.

Drying in the spray booth at work between coats.

Now, because the table was now over 1/8 of an inch smaller in one direction, none of the screw holes on one side were going to line up. And with age, all the holes had opened up to the point that if I had put the screws back in, the holes would strip as I tightened them down. So, I used a hardwood dowel to fill the holes, basically giving me a brand new spot for each screw.

In the end, I think my efforts paid off:
I'm happy with it, as it turned out better than I had hoped it would. It was also a learning experience for me, as well as a refresher for some techniques I haven't used since high school. Hopefully my repair will last another 50 years.