Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…
This week I wrapped up a pretty cool looking bowl. I believe it is Honey Locust, and it has some of the best looking grain I’ve ever encountered.
I don’t often turn a bowl like this, a so called a natural edge bowl, but it made sense to do so with this wood. If only I had an actual use for it 🙂
I was finally able to order the remaining part for this Majestic fountain pen kit. I’ve yet to write with one of these myself, but they sure do look great.
I recently completed my first fountain pen, a Majestic Junior model from Penn State Industries. The wood is a piece of white oak from the Shawshank Tree, the tree at the end of the movie The Shawshank Redemption.
Having gotten into ham radio, I’ve been assembling a small, portable kit of essentials for getting on the air and making contacts. Because I have a hard time hearing and recalling callsigns, I write down their fragments as I hear them if I am not by a computer for immediate logging. So I need to have pens and pencils at hand.
Enter, my new cherry pencil case.
I then used my laser engraver to put my brand new callsign on it. Well, that was the plan anyway. I ran into the all-too-common problem of the Laserpecker LX1 freezing mid-engraving and had a LOT of trouble trying to get it to restart exactly where it left off. That was further complicated because the rotary was involved.
The result is that it looks great from a distance, but up close just makes me cringe. Oh well, it’s mine and will still hold a few pens and pencils just fine. It was a great proof of concept and was fun to mix a few hobbies.
The trees in the boulevard in our neighborhood are mostly Bradford Pear. Anyone familiar with these trees knows how weak they are and how poorly they stand up to storms.
One of these directly in front our house succomed to a storm this summer and a tree service came and cut it down. I was home when they started their work and asked if I could have a couple pieces of the trunk. They were more than happy, and left me with these:
I processed, rough turned a few bowsl, and set them aside to dry.
Now, five months later, the first of the batch was ready to turn (the smallest one). Wow, does it turn nice and easy. There’s one TINY crack in it, but it did make a good looking bowl.
I’m looking forward to the other pieces getting dry enough to finish this winter.
Following up on Logs to Bowls, here is a pair of bowls made from some figured walnut I received in log form earlier this year.
This one has the best looking figure, but I did end up accidentally leaving some tool marks, much to my disappointment. The walls were already too thin for me to make one more pass to try and clean them up, so I’ve just resigned myself to being OK with it. That said, this is my favorite of the two.
The other has a nice knot in the middle, which adds to its overall apperance. As simple as it is, I like the shape of this one better.
I have now had my lathe for a year. When I first starting using it, my goal was to be able to make some simple things by the end of the first year. I was able to achieve this, and even start turning some basic bowls.
Last week I decided to try a more ambitious bowl – one starting from a far more raw form than the “blanks” I’ve been using, and much larger.
Enter this nice piece of cherry, which only barely fit on my lathe. This tool can handle up to 12″ round, this one clocked in at 11 1/2″. It’s also the heaviest thing I’ve tried on this machine.
It was rough starting out. I initially had the lathe set to the lowest speed in the High range, and boy did it complain. It was slow to start, quick to slow down under pressure, and had just enough vibration to make cutting a struggle.
Once I got smart and changed the belts to Low mode, things went much better and progress much quicker.
It wasn’t too long until it actually started to look like a bowl – at least on the outside.
I had every intention of making a live edge bowl – meaning the bark remains along the rim. It started out well, but eventually enough came off that I decided to strip all of it and end up with a natural edge bowl instead.
After the main portion of the bowl was complete, I made my first jam chuck and turned the bowl around (with some quilting batting from Ana) so that I could complete the bottom. 4 months ago, the thought of having to first turn a jam chuck on the lathe before using it was daunting. Now? Not so much. Progress.
After turning and applying some tung oil, the bowl was complete. There are still some tool marks in the bowls I make, and this one is no exception. I am, however, improving with each one I make. I’ve also made some great strides with regards to sharpening, which helps tremendously.
Here’s the final product! I don’t know what we’ll do with it, but it feels like a bit of a milestone I’m proud of.
To get some woodturning practice in this afternoon, I turned a small piece of maple (6″x6″x2″ I believe) into what I’m calling a candy dish.
It isn’t a regular bowl shape. Rather, there’s a small base upon which the dish sits and the sides of the dish have more character than a simple bowl shape.
Looking at it now after a few hours, I can see the base could use a little shaping itself and possibly be made a little shorter. I find it funny that I’ve seen bowls and dishes my whole life but it isn’t easy to come up with pleasing shapes when turning. This is close, I think, but could benefit from some tweaks.
Two other new things for me in this piece are: 1) the black groove, burned in with wire, and 2) the use of friction polish to give it it’s glossy finish.
I bought this wood as cheap practice blanks but, wow, I really like how they look.
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