This is a smaller chokecherry bowl, turned from the other half of the trunk that made the larger bowl.
Rough turned in early January, I finished it the second week in February 2024. Bowls seem to go very quickly, but then I think of the time I spent fussing over the finish on this one, and suddenly they’re not as quick any more.
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A while back, my sweetie expressed a desire to have a bedside lamp and a night light. I worked with a few different ideas for the lighting part of it before finding the Lanterna 3-Stage Battery Powered Lamp at Lee Valley. It’s just about exactly what I want, except it takes 3 C-cells. More on that later.
So I started by making a twisted tangential turning roughly the shape I wanted for the lamp base.
I also went searching for a rechargeable battery for the lamp. Turns out our door cameras have a battery which is just about perfect. The battery has charging circuitry built-in, and the terminals are on one end of the battery, and the charging jack on the other, so I ordered a spare battery. The only question was whether the 3.7 volt battery would drive the light circuit which was expecting 4.5 volts (yes, yes it does).
Then I disassembled the Lanterna and figured out what I could use. It was pretty easy, as there is a ⅜ inch threaded rod down the middle of the lamp holding everything together and carrying the wires from the head to the base. All I needed to do was cut off the battery holder, shorten the rod to fit my base, and then solder the wires onto the rechargeable battery terminals.
Then because my base was a little short, I cut a piece of walnut and carved out a battery-shaped hole in it, leaving the hole just large enough to slide the battery through, but tight enough that the battery won’t fall out when you pick up the lamp.
With the walnut base glued to the twisted base, finishing was just a matter of a few coats of danish oil, a coat of shellac, followed by two coats of violin varnish, and then a thin layer of carnauba wax so the lamp should be easier to dust.
My sweetie thinks it’s wonderful.
Technical notes: the battery charging circuit may not support operation of the lamp while charging. I don’t think this is a big problem, but that’s part of why the charging jack is on the bottom of the lamp. It’s less tempting to try and use the lamp while it’s charging this way. Also, Ring doorbell batteries are about half the price of the TP-Link batteries, but the charging jack and battery terminals are on the same end of the battery. Depending on your design, this may be good or bad.
Finally, the three stages of the lamp were chosen fairly well. The dimmest is slightly too-bright for a night-light, but putting a colored lens in front of the LEDs would solve that. And would be easy given the way the lamp screws together. And the current draw is low enough that the lamp should last 10-20 hours at full power, and almost a full week in nightlight mode. I think that’s a pretty decent life.
#project #lamp #woodworking #woodturning
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Originally written 16. January, 2022
A friend is building a lathe from scraps and I wanted to make sure he has something to work with when he gets it working, so I made a bedan for him.
The handle is a sandwich of cherry and sycamore. I had enough of this sandwich for four handles for lathe tools. The ferrule is a piece of .50 BMG cartridge I had laying around. And the tool itself is a 10mm square HSS rod I got from China.
The picture above is just the one bedan, but four views of it, so you can see all four sides at once.
Steps to build this:
That's it. Took me about three days elapsed time, but only a few hours of work. I was working on other projects at the same time.
I made a second one for another friend, using 1 inch diameter brass for the ferrule. I think this is a better fit for ⅜ and ½ inch bedans (9 and 12mm).
#project #woodworking #woodturning #tools
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I’ve turned a number of pens over the past couple months (starting in mid-February, 2023), and haven’t posted any of them until now. I guess it’s time to catch up with them.
These pens are either based on the Anvil EDC Pen Kit or the DuraClick EDC Pen Kit from Penn State Industries, both of which take a Parker style refill, which means I can use my favorite refill, which is the Uniball Jetstream, a gel refill available in black, blue, or red in various widths. If a pen doesn’t say what kit it was based on, it’s based on the Anvil.
First pen was a piece of greenheart? with the aluminum hardware.
And an elm pen with gunmetal hardware.
Next was a piece of maroon and white resin with brass hardware.
A friend sent me a pen blank of some dark green wood which turned almost black when finished. I chose the gunmetal hardware for this one.
I had a scrap of ash, and filled the pores on it with some black grain-filler. The black anodized aluminum hardware seemed like a good match.
I had some ipe left over from other projects. The photo is taken just after it was turned, and I suspect the wood will darken up considerably after exposure to air and light. Gunmetal hardware again.
Birdseye maple got blue stripes (need more practice on that so I get nice crisp edges) and black anodized aluminum hardware.
A piece of mimosa got gunmetal hardware.
Some more Birdseye maple with brass hardware.
I paired another piece of mimosa with stainless steel hardware
And finally, a pen of cholla cactus with green and red resin and brass hardware.
Those were the first ten pens I made. I’ve given away four of them so far. Friends seem to enjoy them, so I’ll probably keep making them.
Edited to add on 4/4/23, a white oak pen with black grain-fill and gunmetal hardware.
Edited to add on 4/5/23, a bradford pear pen with brass hardware.
Edited to add on 4/6/23, an ash pen with violet grain-fill and brass hardware. I need to use more violet dye in the grain-fill next time, and sand to at least 220 grit before filling the grain (I only sanded to 120 this time, and sanding back the excess grain-filler left me with the grayish color).
May 30: A DuraClick EDC pen in burnt bronze with juniper wood
May 30: A DuraClick EDC pen kit in black anodized aluminum with a piece of juniper showing both the redder heartwood as well as the pale sapwood.
I like the assembly of the DuraClick EDC, but the fact that the click doesn’t match the other metal parts isn’t great. Also, an 8mm drill leaves the wood very tight around the mechanism. Both of these pens have a microscopic crack in the wood due to the hole being just a hair too small.
May 30: A DuraClick EDC pen kit in brass with pine wood. I got the tip of the wood a little too small. Turns out, pine is softer than most of the woods I turn.
June 1: A DuraClick EDC in aluminum with juniper wood. I had a little tear out on this, but the DuraClick is a thick enough kit that I could almost recover by making a small waist in the wood.
June 1: A DuraClick EDC in stainless with pine. This pine blank had a knot and crack which I filled with sawdust from the same piece and some CA glue. I like the way it turned out.
June 2: An Anvil EDC in gunmetal with ipe. This isn’t the prettiest piece of ipe I have, but the grain should get a little more interesting after it gets some sunshine.
June 2: An Anvil EDC in brass with apple wood from my yard in Minneapolis. I was worried there wouldn’t be much contrast between the wood and the brass. Plus I had an incident when trimming the blank to length, and almost threw it away.
After gluing the wood back together and waiting for it to dry, I discovered a small knot buried in the blank, and other cracks. It took quite a bit of CA glue to turn this blank into a pen, but it was well worth saving, I think!
The figure in this piece of apple was some of the best I’ve found while using the pieces of tree I moved from MN. This is the first pen I think I would be happy selling for the kind of prices some other woodturners charge for pens.
June 8: An Anvil EDC Pencil in black anodized aluminum with a birds-eye maple body. I had planned to take a longer break from pen making, but needed a completed pen in the shop in order to make a box to hold a pen, so I knocked this one together.
June 12: I got a Vesper Starter Kit a while back and finished the three pens today. I don’t think I’ll be buying more of that kit. They look pretty good, but they’re a little fiddly to assemble, and I don’t think they’re as good looking as some other pens.
First is the chrome kit with a juniper barrel, which was given to my doctor’s nurse/admin as a retirement present.
Then the gold kit with a white oak barrel.
And finally the gunmetal kit with a juniper barrel, which was given to my doctor as a retirement present.
June 24:
I made three mechanical pencils using the Anvil EDC pencil kit and a scrap of cherry I found in a pile of sawdust and shavings while cleaning. Pretty nice looking for scraps!
July 29:
Three Anvil EDC pens, red resin with gold glitter (boy, is that a mess to turn!) and brass hardware; dark-green-dyed buckeye burl with gunmetal hardware; and a blue-dyed ring-porous wood with brass hardware.
#Woodworking #PenTurning #WoodTurning
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I took some time off from bigger projects in the shop lately to play with my lathe.
Pictured above, from left to right:
A eucalyptus and ash shaving brush. The brush is silvertip badger, and is pretty nice. The eucalyptus was cut and the kerfs replaced with pieces of ash microlumber the same size as the kerf of my table saw, and then I turned the resulting piece to make a Celtic knot. This was the second shaving brush I made in the past week.
A russian olive bottle stopper / pourer. This was the third of three bottle stoppers I made. I had a little fun with the shape, trying to enhance the look of the grain of the wood.
A maple and pernambuco bottle stopper / pourer. My second of the three, and first attempt at a two ring celtic knot. The pernambuco tends to chip out if I’m not super-careful in my turning. Lesson learned…
A maple bottle stopper / pourer. This was my first attempt, and I was mostly concerned with getting the hole for the stopper the right depth. I decorated the maple a bit with a Henry Taylor Decorating Elf which uses a spiral bit to make different patterns depending the angle you hold it in relation to the moving wood on the lathe. I also used some markers to add black and red rings.
A mimosa shaving brush. My first attempt, and I didn’t get too fancy, just letting the wood do the talking. I think it came out pretty well. Mixing the very small amount of epoxy needed (about 7.5ml total) to glue in the metal cap and the knot of the brush is tricky, but I did discover that if I wax the wood really well first, it’s easier to clean any slop off afterwards.
#woodturning #woodworking #project
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This is a collection of things I wrote about various #woodworking and #woodturning #techniques I've figured out over the years. I don't claim to be an expert, but I've made enough mistakes that I'm not a complete beginner, either.
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A while ago I picked up a bedan to add to my set of turning tools, and it's rapidly become one of my favorites, due to its versatility and ease of sharpening (I touch it up on the same stones I use for my smaller chisels, which aren't as flat as the ones for the big chisels and plane-blades – that's probably another blog at some point).
Anyway, back to the bedan. I've mostly been using it as a heavy scraper, which it does pretty well. But that sharp edge doesn't have to be presented as a scraper. It can also be used in a peeling cut to rough a spindle in a big hurry, or, as I practiced today, to do planing cuts like a skew on steroids. (If you don't know what the various cuts are, go read Simplifying the Skew now. It'll clear things up.
So, I started practicing planing cuts. The huge bevel of a bedan means that riding the bevel is pretty idiot-proof. Even I can see and feel that big bevel rubbing on the piece I'm turning. The only trick is not catching the side and inadvertently using it as a scraper, which will push the bedan into the piece, causing a bigger catch with the edge… bad juju. But the tool is so heavy, it'll just plow through the wood and remove a giant divot. No real worry about breaking a 3/8” square piece of tool steel with mere wood.
I ripped a chunk of SPF (spruce pine fir) construction tubafor into two squarish two-by-twos, and chucked it up. Put a live center in the tailstock to hold it straight. I've found when I'm trying a new technique, using a chuck on the headstock and a live center on the tailstock makes it almost impossible to have a catch that heaves the piece of wood around the room. Not totally impossible, but almost. Safety first, kids!
My first ball went really well. Wow! This was using the same tool I had just used to rough the piece to round, and there was wood everywhere. And then to get a finish like this with the same tool… Wow!
The second one… well… I started having problems.
See that spiral on the left of the frame? That's a catch anyone learning the skew will recognize immediately. But it wasn't that bad or scary. It just bugged me. Wait! What's with my tool-rest? Or, it's full of notches from my six months of learning to turn, and sometimes having… boo boos.
After addressing that with a flat bastard file, the rest felt a lot better and my bedan didn't catch in the divots causing problems with my practice.
That second one is a bit of wood planed off near the end of the ball. That's one heavy “curly”.
Things weren't all sunshine and puppies, but I feel like I made some progress this morning.
Here's the one-shot explanation if you want to try it yourself. For a planing cut, similar to rolling a bead with a skew, you want the edge of the bedan somewhere around 70 degrees away from parallel to the piece. Keep the top edge of the bevel just clear of the piece, so it doesn't act like a scraper, and rotate the bedan to keep the bevel tracking down into the v-groove you cut before starting the ball.
That's about what I learned this morning. I've got five more chunks of tubafor to practice on over the next five days. I'll try to post again as I figure out more.
Edited to add: my afternoon practice piece went very well. I practiced planing cuts, as well as paring cuts and turned the following piece:
I was proud enough of it that I finished it by sanding it, then applying my homemade friction finish (linseed oil and shellac).
Here's a closeup of where a knot made for some very tricky grain. The bedan cut through it pretty cleanly. Note that this is after less than 3 hours of practicing with the tool.
Techniques Contents #woodworking #woodturning #techniques
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Yesterday I decided I wanted to make a bowl, so I went digging through the wood horde and found a chunk of elm that looked as though it might want to be a bowl.
I rough-turned it yesterday and soaked it pretty well with linseed oil. This morning, the oil had firmed up the spots in the grain that were giving me trouble (likely because I haven’t sharpened my bowl gouges in a while) and I got the bowl cleaned up and finished. I really like the way ulmiform grain looks when everything goes right.
I think it came out fairly well. Finished by sanding to 400 grit, then a coat of linseed oil, a couple coats of shellac, and finally a coat of paste wax.
#woodturning #woodworking #bowl
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After yesterday’s mimosa bottle opener and getting a late start this morning due to the fog, I decided I’d make another bottle opener. This one uses a piece of apple wood from a crab-apple tree that had been in my front yard in Minneapolis. I made it a bit longer and stouter than the previous one, and it feels better in big hands like mine. Plus it’s pretty wood with just enough spalting to add some visual interest.
#woodworking #woodturning #project
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A while back (maybe back in the summer), I ordered a few Niles Bottle Opener Kits from Penn State. This morning, after doing a glue-up on another project, and not being willing to call it a day in the shop yet, I dug one of them out and grabbed a chunk of mimosa that a buddy had sent me, and got to work.
This is the result. For my first try with this kit, I think it came out ok. I know of a few things I’ll do better next time around, but it’s a spindle-oriented turning, and I’m getting pretty good with my skew, so any deficiencies are more a matter of not spending the time to figure out a good design than any problems in implementation.
Anyway, it was a fun project. Turned it, sanded from 60 up to 400 grit, used Ack’s Sanding Paste to partially finish, epoxied the opener into the wood with some five-minute epoxy, cut off the stub-tenon, sanded the end of the handle smooth by hand, and then buffed it all with the Beall Wood Buffing System to make it all pretty. About 75 minutes elapsed for a fun little project.
#woodworking #woodturning #project
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