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Market and musings

Quick post today. First, I wanted to let people know that I’ve started putting up items for sale. Check out the Market section. I have a lot more than is posted (my actual camera is broken, so getting good photos has become a new hurdle), so be sure to check back in later or reach out if you’re looking for something. And watch for Christmas ornaments coming mid-fall!

I also wanted to share a bit of musing. I was out in the shop a few days ago, turning either the ash or the apple from our friend who brought all the different woods. As is my nature, I started mentally listing all the woods I’ve had the opportunity to turn, and then all the people and places that wood came from. It’s so amazing to me, I just needed to share.

I’ve received chunks of wood in so many forms: logs, pieces of logs, semi-dried blanks from another turner’s stash, trimmed slabs, offcuts from cabinetry making. I’ve cut up whole trunks and branches that fell in my backyard. I’ve turned (in alphabetical order) apple, ash, beech, black walnut, box elder, butternut, cherry, chestnut, lilac, mahogany, mulberry, oak of unknown variety, olive ash, silver maple, sugar maple, and walnut. Then, in the shed waiting for me are cedar, elm (two kinds), honey locust, poplar, red oak, white oak, and yew.

In addition to my own backyard, my stash has grown thanks to Bill (who sold me the lathe and sent me home with a pile of wood for experimenting), my brother Mike (who had a bunch of trees fall in a late winter storm), Cory (who had two cherry trees down on his property), Steve (a fellow turner who cut me my first bowl blanks to learn with), John S and the other John S (friends with interesting logs sitting around), the people cutting up the tree that fell on the abandoned house across the street, a new friend Keith who happens to be an arborist, the DOT guys cleaning up after a summer storm (who very nicely stopped their cleanup efforts to load a log into my car), and of course Eric (the source of the latest mother lode). And then there is the wood I used in the various classes and workshops.

I’m not sure I can think of any other craft with such a unique procurement chain for the raw materials. Thank you everyone!!!!

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American chestnut, whoa!

I’m not kidding! A friend took it as a challenge to find me some species that I hadn’t yet turned. He showed up with 14 logs, twelve different varieties: cherry, poplar, hard maple, soft maple, red oak, white oak, cedar, elm, butternut, ash, apple, and… American chestnut. I think he wins the “find something special” award.

The chestnut has actually been laying around for awhile, so I figured I might as well start there. And really, who wouldn’t? So, after checking in with another turning friend for any clues he might offer on handling the chestnut, I dove in.

Isn’t that gorgeous coloring? The middle piece is the thin slab I usually take out of the middle of a log and set aside for small plates or spindles. the two large chunks moved along the process to becoming bowls. The first step is marking out the bowls, where I notice the first crack. Here is my layout for one half of the log. I split it across to get one medium bowl (right), and one small bowl and two small spindles worked around the crack (left).

So, I worked around that crack on the left. I’ll get a couple chunks just the right size for two very nice whiskey stoppers. (I’m not sure why, but I think this wood goes better with whiskey.). And I’ll still get a small bowl from the right side. And a medium sized bowl from the piece on the right. The medium bowl did show a bit of cracking. I was hoping I could turn the medium bowl shallow to get below the X’ed out crack. Step two is further breaking down and trimming on the bandsaw, then drill center holes for mounting on lathe.

Definitely wasn’t going to get that second small bowl. That piece split completely on the crack when I bandsawed between the two small bowls. What didn’t really dawn on me until later, was that crack wasn’t just a crack–it was actually a separated ring… that probably didn’t happen to stop separating at the point I cut the log half in half again …. I bet you can see where I’m going, here. When I drilled the small bowl for mounting, it too split just like the piece on the right (photo further below).

So let’s put the medium bowl on the lathe. There were also longitudinal cracks in the log that I knew about. I knew I was going to have to cut deep enough into the log to get beneath them.

I kept cutting, and got to a beautiful clean surface. No more longitudinal cracks, but now I have a crack on each side that followed the separated growth ring.

I tried gluing them up, but when I flipped the bowl to hollow out the inside, another crack appeared, and kept opening. I know some turners deal with cracks as a feature, but I’m still a bit timid about having the bowl blow apart and across the room. So I stopped hollowing about 3/4″ down.

I still had a single big bowl planned for the other log half. Miraculously, that did hold together. What with the longitudinal cracks, it ended up being smaller than I had hoped. But it seems pretty solid, and even if it’s smaller than planned, it’s very pretty. And unusual.

So all I have to show for several hours of work are two blanks for whiskey stoppers (not in photo), a split apart small bowl and an almost split apart medium bowl that I’m not sure yet what to do with, and one now-medium sized bowl. I’m a bit bummed, but also still excited to hopefully have the one bowl survive the drying.

And 12 wood types + 14 logs … must have been some repeats, right?. Yup, two cherry and two chestnut. The other chestnut is a bit bigger than this one. So I get to have this whole adventure again. But now I know to look closely at that growth ring. If it looks bad, I won’t even try for bowls. I’ll cut up for spindles to be used for boxes or peppermills or such.

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Working Small

A few weeks ago, I decided to spend some time doing spindle turning. To oversimplify, that’s when you put a stick on the lathe instead of a block of wood. The grain of a spindle runs the long way, from one end of the stick to the other. Think stair balusters or cocktail muddlers. In this case, I turned small sections of branches into simple vases.

From left to right, we have one silver maple, three sugar maple, and two beech. These aren’t really meant for whole bouquets. They have only a smallish hole in the top that does not get wider as it goes down the vase. To do that would be to make a hollow form–a whole different turning project. These are meant to be decorative as they are, or maybe hold a simple stem or two (no water). But they can show off some pretty wood features, and look nice in groupings.

A few weeks ago, I traveled to have dinner with some long-time friends. We met at a BYO restaurant (quite common in NJ), and we were all planning who was bringing what wine. So I thought it would be fun to bring everyone their own wine stoppers.

Left to right: 150 year old wood from barn, maple of unknown type, spalted sugar maple, lilac, sugar maple.

It was fun doing something simple and relatively quick. I think I’ll try to find time more often to do more of this. Besides, if I want to attend a craft market, I’ll need a decent stock of finished items to sell.

When I say relatively quick…. The steps in making a bottle stopper, are more than you might think:

1. Mount the rough stick of wood between two pointy centers and turn until it’s round. Make a tenon on one end.

2. Remove the pointy centers from the lathe and put a chuck and jaws on the motor end of the lathe. The jaws will hold the stick more firmly than pinching it between two points, and they don’t require you to support the stick on the other end.

3. Now that the other end is freely accessible (no pointy center holding it up), drill a hole in the end of the round blank.

4. Put away your drill and grab a different tool to tap the hole (cut screw threads on the inside of the hole).

5. Remove the wood from the chuck and jaws, remove the chuck from the lathe, and mount a new fixture on the lathe that has a screw sticking out that exactly matches the threads you just put on the inside of the hole.

6. Thread your stick onto this new fixture. You can now turn the shape of the stopper.

Sand and apply finish. Unscrew the finished wood from the lathe and screw in the metal piece.

A vase is similar, but you don’t have the steps to create threads or mount the wood on the threaded fixture. But the vase sticks out farther, so it’s a good idea to use the drilled opening as a place to put additional support, in the form of a pointy center.

Here’s the silver maple vase from above, mounted on the left in jaws, with added support of a cone-shaped center resting in it’s drilled opening. The live center should be comfortably snug, but not cranked in hard, and I promise you, that’s how I had it. But if you look closely, you’ll see that it cracked. (This is that same silver maple that keeps cracking on me–I think the tree was stressed when it fell.)

Can you see what I did to address the crack? Yup, made a shorter vase!

If you like these vases or bottle stoppers, I know a way you can get one of your own. Come over and turn one! I’ve already walked two people through turning their own vases. It’s fun! We would both get something out of it. I have a long term goal of teaching turning in a more formal setting, so I would love to get more experience teaching individually. And you get to try something new and go home with a nice project. For a total beginner, we’d need about 3 hours.

(These are also available for sale, but where’s the fun in that?!)

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Circling back

In migrating all this material from the Google Photos album to here, I noticed that I’ve made reference to items, or promised follow-up, that I haven’t actually gotten around to sharing yet. So let’s catch us up on some things!

First, I thought some of you might enjoy seeing exactly what my pile of rough turned bowls looks like. At the moment, it isn’t a single pile. I’m in the process of moving my storage area from the loft of the shop to the loft of the shed. The plan is that the shed will become my dedicated workspace. It’s a nice sized space, with a tall ceiling and three big windows. I’m looking forward to it! And then there are a few bowls waiting to be finish turned, currently stashed under my lathe. And about a dozen (no photo) tucked away in shavings for initial drying.

I think I promised a photo of the natural edge butternut once it had finish applied. Here it is, along with a black walnut natural edge that I was pretty happy with.

Then, I thought I’d share some photos of some of the other completed items I’ve accumulated (and not yet parted with).

Here is a collection of oak bowls

and some beech bowls. On a couple of them, I tried my hand at dyeing the outside (blue and an olive green)

Spalted maple

and, finally, some silver maple. This is the same wood that split terribly on two big bowls (“I’m still at it” in March). These didn’t split… and they dried amazingly fast. So I’m still not sure what’s up with that wood. But these came out ok.

Not photographed are the quick, fun items I’ve been turning in between using up scraps–things like wine stoppers, square plates, vases, more ornaments. Maybe next time!

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Green turnings

Here are a few interesting things I’ve turned in the last couple months from wet wood. Two are complete, a couple are just rough turns.

Let’s start with the cherry that was cut down last October. Fortunately, we cut the logs longer than necessary. So although I have to take off quite a few inches from either end because they’ve cracked over the months, I do still get to good wood for more rough turned cherry bowls and platters. But what to do with the little bits left after I fussy cut for the big stuff?

Here’s one thing I tried. (Sorry I have limited photos of the process.) I had a slice of log about 2-3 inches thick. So I decided to try my hand at a cross grain tube, something I’ve seen Richard Raffan make. It’s actually quite a fun little project. I cut a spindle blank from just to the side of the pith. This gets mounted just like you’d mount a stick to turn a rolling pin, or ornaments.

But what’s different is that the grain is running in the same direction it would if it were a bowl. The grain is running the short way across the stick, not the length of the stick like it would be for a rolling pin. So you’re cutting a spindle, but because of the direction of the grain (across the piece, thus “cross grain tube”), you use bowl gouges. I didn’t find it technically challenging–it just reinforced in me that the wood determines the tool just as much as the shape.

Here it is just after it was turned, before it dried and warped and before I put any finish on it. (Keep reading for a photo of the final product.)

The next day, I took this scrap

…and turned this. I was REALLY happy with this. Finally figuring out how to do this was such a great feeling.

Here are the pair, all dried and warped and finished and beautiful

Before I close this post, I wanted to share some last bit of rough turned maple. Another crotch from the maple from July 2023

I made what I hope will be a matched pair of bowl and platter

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Holey cracks, Batman!

(sorry …. 🙂 )

Let’s see some success stories with blemishes! First holes and otherwise gnarly wood. These two are both maple. I knew going in that they might be a challenge. I think I just wanted to see what was up with them. Could I make something out of these less than wonderful lumps?

This one is pretty big. If I remember, it’s 8-9 inches diameter. It had a rotten spot where a branch was

Other than the hole, it was stable, so I kept going.

It’s drying in the loft.

The second one is smaller.

I followed Richard Raffan’s rule. First, remove what you can’t use and see what’s left. Only then should you decide what shape you make. This is the approximate shape I was left with when I finally removed the tunnel.

Here’s the final product. Remember that it was (semi) wet maple, so it distorted as it dried. I didn’t get it quite thin enough, but I like this shape. I want to try again sometime.

On to the cracks. First an ash bowl. It had a big crack that I started getting nervous about when I put it in my jumbo jaws to clean up the foot. So I took it back out without finishing the foot. It was a decent bowl, and it was the first bowl I rough turned. I held onto it like you see it here for awhile, with crack and ugly tenon.

Then I finally decided I owe it to myself to finish it. So I made a jam chuck (which is basically a rounded piece of wood that I jammed the bowl onto), held it in place on the jam chuck with the tail stock, and cleaned up the foot. It ain’t a beauty, but it’s kind of my first. So I even signed it.

I also finish turned a stack of beech. One of them had a crack. But the rest came out nice. I didn’t think to take a photo of the uncracked ones, and I think I’ve already given them away.

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Workshop with Laurent Niclot

I’m a member of the Rochester-based Finger Lakes Woodturners Club. A couple times a year, they have well-known turners in to teach day long workshops. I went to one taught by Laurent Niclot. I was intrigued because he works in the less common areas of turning, and his creations are much more heavily influenced by art than craft. You can see some of his stuff here.

It was so much fun. He was a perfect instructor, and he really just wanted to help you turn whatever you were interested in. We each got to pick what we wanted to try–no predetermined project. I started with hollowing a mini vessel. I’ve never done hollowing before, and small seemed like a comfortable place to start.

The club provided small blocks of wet cherry and maple. I picked a cherry block, and immediately gravitated to one of my favorite shapes, influenced by Greek wine amphorae.

After shaping the outside and drilling a depth hole to define the inside bottom and give your hollowing tools a place to get in, it’s time to start hollowing.

Unknowingly, I picked a first-timer-friendly shape. The way I shaped the top shoulder made it easier to get the tool in there at enough of an angle. Even so, I was probably one of the slowest in the class. I’ve learned that I’m a bit less aggressive than most turners. but I figure if I enjoy it and I get to the end, who cares if I take longer? (If I ever get to the point of selling my turnings, I might think differently 🙂 )

The last step is parting the vase off from the waste end of the block. I don’t want to end at the current thin point in the photo above–that would be a heavy, clunky shape. Laurent helped me by showing me how he visualizes the “true” bottom and how to figure out the best way to uncover it.

Here it is finished and fresh off the lathe.

And here it is after it dried (remember, this was wet cherry), and I sanded and oiled it at home. It’s 3.5 inches tall and 2 inches wide at its widest.

I may be slow, but that didn’t take me ALL day. I had time to try a second project. So I mounted up another piece of cherry and learned about multi axis turning. My goal here is to turn a water droplet like what Laurent does.

Let’s break down the wood by sections to lay out what’s going to happen. From the left, we have the waste material next to the jaws. The fat part will be the body of the droplet. The flare (looks like the top part of a vase) will be partially turned away to create the bent tip of the droplet. Then the last cylinder portion is also waste.

Here’s the multi-axis part. I removed the waste at the top and I’ve loosened the wood in the jaws and skewed the wood so now the central axis it spins on is not the center of the wood. I’m about to cut on a different axis than above. When I start up the lathe again, I’ll just cut away some wood at the very top.

Here you can see how the section of the top that stuck out farther was the part that met my gouge and was cut away, while the side that didn’t stick out as far wasn’t cut at all. On the left side, you might also make out how the jaws do not have as firm a grip on the wood as they did when cutting on the primary axis. Because of this, light cuts are better–right up my alley!

When I cut away as much as I could (which was determined as the moment my arc of cutting almost met itself along the top rim), I squared it back in the jaws and got set up to manually rasp away the rest of the material. You can see pencil marks on some of what still needed to go. At this step, I learned that I really want a nice French rasp. What a fun tool to have.

I brought it home and finished the shaping (with some old metal rasps I found in Chris’ toolbox). Now all that’s left to do is mount it on my lathe and remove the waste at the bottom.

(In the background is a maple bowl I turned all the way to finished from semi-wet maple. My mom has this now, and I don’t think I have any other photos to share, but it’s very pretty.)

And finally, the finished cherry drop. I’ve seen multi-axis stuff before this, and usually dismissed it as something that aesthetically didn’t excite me. But I learned that the process is interesting, and I really like this shape. I’d like to find more ways to use this technique–but in a way that makes sense artistically, not simply as a way to make something quirky.

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I’m still at it!

The first part of this year has been a bit hectic, but I’ve managed to squeeze in a bit of lathe time in between other stuff. So here’s a recap of the last couple months…

This is some black walnut that I got from a friend of my mom (I’ll take free wood from anyone!). The darkness of the wood really surprised me. I guess I thought it only got that dark when it had finish applied. It’s beautiful wood, but actually gives you an unpleasant taste. Guess I need better face protection!

Here’s the same walnut bowl in different light and maybe slightly drier. I actually got three rough turned bowls from the bit of walnut I had (the other two are posted below). Despite trying to dry them slowly, they have started cracking. I’m trying to stabilize them with CA glue, but TBD if this will work 🙁

Some more of the bowls I turned in the spring (the oak I got from my brother’s yard) are ready for finish turning. You can see that one had a crack that blew apart when I was turning. If I had been able to find the piece, I perhaps could have glued it back, or done something creative …

… but this is what the workspace looks like after a bit of turning. I wasn’t going to find that chip.

I’ve been doing a bunch of live edge bowls, with varying success. Here are the best ones, with a still wet coat of oil on them. From the bottom: butternut, walnut, maple, cherry, maple. The unfinished on off to the side is also cherry

Two more walnut. These are probably about 9′ diameter. The lighter colored stack are more oak from spring ready to be finished. You’ll see the middle one in just a minute.

This is some silver maple I got from a tree that fell on the barn, RV and house across the street. Silver maple is softer than sugar maple (the other kind of maple I’ve turned). Again, I had it drying in wet shavings like usual, but wow! This was not salvageable. They’re sitting next to the fire pit as I type. I don’t know if the cracks are typical of silver maple, or if the tree was stressed from falling. Its a shame, too. These were nice big bowls–at least 10″ diameter.

This is the finished oak I mentioned a couple photos ago. i am really, really proud of this one–the shape, the thinness of the walls…

…the trickery to have no foot.

More free wood. Maple from our friend, John. I think this might be silver maple again. I cut this limb up into 6″ sections (you can see my chalk marks). I cut each segment in half for 12 blanks.

Here are the 12 rough turned bowls. For this project, I was trying to make them all as similar as I could. I’d love to try to get some “matched” sets out of them. The rough are all 140-150mm diameter and 45mm tall. Now lets hope I have better luck with drying this maple than the last.

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Finish turning, last of the butternut, ornaments

I have started bringing some of the smaller ones down to finish turn. The one farthest away is oak from my brother that I turned in the spring. The other four are maple from our backyard. They look good in the photo, but they have issues. I give them all a B- to B+.

Finish turned six of these guys. the American Beech also from my brother’s yard.

The last piece of butternut. I turned one in the usual way (top of bowl in the center of the log) and one as natural edge. I’m happy with this natural edge! Definitely getting there. It still needs to be sanded and sealed. I’ll try to remember to post a photo when that is done. We’ll see what the feather running down the middle looks like.

Some ornaments from scraps. Woods are (in no particular order), beech, ash, cherry, silver maple, sugar maple, lilac.

Left to right: lilac with bark left, butternut, cherry x 2, spalted maple. Merry Christmas!

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More free wood, natural edge bowls

Here I’ve been trying to keep my wood hoarding under the radar, and Chris brings me more! The really ugly piece is walnut, the others we think are butternut.

This is the ?butternut? The person who cut the wood thought it was also walnut. The only tree I know that looks like a walnut from the leaves and nuts, but is pale inside is a butternut. Very cool wavy-gravy ring pattern. I made about a half dozen rough turned bowls from those pieces.

Now THIS is walnut. As was obvious from first photo, this log had seen better days, So I didn’t get much good out of it. but this is kinda cool! I love leaving the sap wood on it for contrast, but I don’t know if it will dry okay like this. Will the heartwood and sap wood dry differently and crack the bowl? I guess I’ll know in a few months

Two more to add to the pile drying up in the loft.

I went back to the cherry. I thought I’d try a natural edge bowl and this piece with a flat area of bark seemed perfect, but you can see it was already cracking. Here it is with it’s matching wedges from the same log. You can see the cracking.

I picked a different piece to try again anyway. Big crack here.

Enh … let’s keep going anyway. Its a learning experience. I stabilized the crack with CA glue so at least the thing won’t explode on me (I hoped).

Very pretty wood. And good for learning. But walls are too thick, it’s cracked and the profile is a little clunky.

This is a maple natural edge bowl. Much better than the cherry.