Tag: Woodturning

Another week and another small bowl. The bowl was created on a cool and wet afternoon. The dog kept me company for the afternoon and kept listening for the rain, see photo. This was when it wasn’t chewing plants or digging holes, ahh the joys of puppies.

I bought some firewood at the local garden centre about  a year or so ago. I thought that this would be a cheap was to get wood for turning.  Most of it was red gum but I picked up a couple of other logs. They were lighter in colour and not as dense.  I didn’t spend more than $5 on the whole lot so no great loss if it was useless. The pictures above show the raw material and the blank mounted on a plate ready for turning.

It thought that the best outcome was  a bit of practice. It was a surpise to see that the light coloured wood was spalted.  I had not realised that this occurred in Australian timbers until quite recently , so I was pleasing to see this emerging as I turned the bowl. An otherwise plain bowl is lifted by the attractive patterns left after the spalting.

Continue reading “Spalted Firewood”

Well a large lump of Queensland Silky Oak has been turned into a large bowl. The final shape was dictated by the shape of the blank. I was trying to maximise the size.This whole thing of the wood  taking charge of the shape seems to be  a recurring theme in the bowls that I have made .

The bowl is approximately 250mm in diameter and 100mm deep.The bowl was finished with wet and dry paper after the usual dry sanding. I finished it with a food safe oil Ecowoodoil called “Natural Woodwipe”. Must say that is went on well its quite thin and seems to soak in well.

We bought a chair some time ago at a church jumble sale. My wife has an affection for chairs and we have a small collection chairs that are all a little different.
In my eyes the chair is rather unusual. Unlike most wooden chairs the back legs are in two pieces. They are split at the level of the seat. The whole assembly is held together by wood screws; the old fashioned slotted kind. I have never seen this sort of construction before. However talking to a man who is 76 about this chair he said that as a child they had a whole dining suite with chairs like this.
The other feature of the construction is that all the rungs have turned tenons. On first inspection they appear to be dowels, as per my sketch below.

When we purchased the chair the front  rung was missing and this has been on my list of things to do.  My new hobby of wood-turning has allowed me to make a  replacement rung. I was fortunate to have some old timber from a piece of furniture that was long past its use by date.  The new rung is almost inextinguishable from the material found in the chair. A bit of Danish oil and some wax sees the chair ready for a new life.

Well the red gum bowl is coming along except for the big hole in the bottom.  The bowl was mounted  on a chuck after having a recess turned on the base. I got so involved in making the sides thin I scraped out the centre of the chuck mount.

As a newbie woodturner this may have been a total disaster and the bowl would have ended up as scrap. However as I am doing a course the teacher said that he  must have done this 21 dozen times! So a mistake is re-emerging as a feature.

The the inside of the bowl was recessed approximately 10mm beyond the hole. Then a piece of contrasting wood was selected in this case a piece of olive wood. The stepped plug was turned from the piece of olive and then glued in place. The glue used was Titebond II after setting for what will be a couple of weeks the base will be completed.  The new feature will be slightly domed to preserve its thickness.

Well week 5 has come and gone , luckily for me I was the only one in the class this week. I have finished the milking stool a nice little three-legged stool with legs that are way fancier than they need to be .

The new things that I learnt about this was drilling the holes in the seat and then turning the legs to fit the drilled holes. I was expecting to use a drill press to make the holes for the legs to fit. The whole process took place on the lathe, a chuck was installed into the headstock with a 19mm forstner bit. A jig was then attached to the tail stock which presented the stool seat at 10° to the drill bit.  The seat rested on two rollers which made rotating it after each hole was drilled very easy indeed.

The great thing about having trees is that you can cut them down for woodworking projects. That’s perhaps an exaggeration. The log in the attached picture  was salvaged from a Pencil Pine that died. The log has been kicking around for  few months and I thought that I might turn some of it in to something. No pun intended!

Having seen one of these in a woodworking magazine it seemed easy enough. The pencil pine is fragrant so it made the job quite pleasant. Not too bad for a first effort. The wood itself isn’t that good there are some splits or shakes. The handle’s style  was modelled on an old chisel handle that from the shed. It feels nice to hold so that is a testament to the old handle design. I did make it slightly larger in diameter so it’s not a dainty handle.

Although the wood was still a little green I did sand it with three grits and finish it with a scourer pad. I may oil it at a later date.   Anyway the mallet is resting on what it came from.