Proper tools are not a luxury

Posted on 2. March 2015 by fuzzy

The predecessor to Bleeding Forest was an ever small hollow form, from the same material. Initial hollowing went fine with just a bowl gouge, but then I wanted to get the shoulder thinned down, so that it wouldn’t look odd when I started with the carving.

At that time (around 2 months ago) I didn’t have proper hollowing tools. So I went and use one of many surplus allen keys, ground the short side into a useful scraper and mounted the key into a drill chuck. Then I set to work. Initially it went sort of OK, but because the handle is not aligned with the tip of the tool, there is substantial rotational force on the handle.

When I was about to put the finishing touches, suddenly the drill chuck started wobbling in my hand, and before I could say “jack shit”, my little vase had exploded in the most violent fashion (at around 1500rpm that is quite a spectacle. Luckily, as I was hollowing, I was well away from the general direction of the debris.

disaster

I now have proper hollowing tools (and a great deal more experience in using them), but I will always keep these pieces to remind me that I need to respect that piece of wood I am working on or it will have its way.

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The trouble with gold is …

Posted on 2. March 2015 by fuzzy

… that in my case it comes out of a (cheapish) spray can, cuz I can’t afford the real thing.

I bought myself two spray cans, one with silver, the other with gold, and thought, let’s see what we can do with this. The silver works great (see here), but the gold is another story altogether.

It splashes around, and instead of a fine spray, the paint comes out in rather large(ish) blobs. What’s worse, it creeps like hell, and if it hits an uneven surface, it separates into its components. Have a look for yourself:

gold is badThis was (and still is) such a nice shape, but I made several mistakes. The first one was to allow time to pass between the initial shaping and putting the finishing touches on. That allowed the shape to warp slightly, and when I tried to cut the little grooves (to visually hide the place where the lid meets the box) the grooves got ragged and of uneven width.

The second mistake was to overestimate the bond of my masking tape and also my ability to shape it precisely how I wanted it. You can see this in the uneven border of the golden spray paint around the bead in the lid, and the lack of masking tape bond is visible in the strips around the lid and body.

The result is rather ghastly, and unfortunately little can be done now to save the piece. The walls of the box and lid are so thin already that trying to take the grooves of would inevitably result in the whole thing collapsing on itself. Well, another few lessons learned.

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Show me the honey!

Posted on 15. February 2015 by fuzzy

Ladies and Gentlemen,

you are looking at a winner. That’s right, I have today won my first competition. OK, it was only the novice category of the chairman’s challenge at the West Midlands Wood Turners, but then, you’ve got to start somewhere. So here’s the winning entry:

laminated-honey-dipperMade from a hard indian maple, with slices of mahonia and african blackwood for the bee’s body, finished with mycrocristalline wax and polished to a medium gloss.

This beat the competition by such a margin, that I was told I could go straight to the intermediate section. Yes, sir!

 

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Let there be light!

Posted on 7. February 2015 by fuzzy

When I first started out turning, I only had a ceiling light, a single T8 tube. It worked, but not very well. I then went and got myself two LED spotlights (from charnwood) on swan necks with magnetic bases. For a long time, one of them was sat on top of the lathe, and this was better. But it still wasn’t great.

spotlightEventually I decided to fix my lighting situation for good. I made two square steel plates and screwed them to the ceiling, and this is now where the spotlights hang down from the ceiling. One is above the lathe, the other above the bench grinder.

The picture to the left shows the one above the lathe, and you can just see the steel plate on top of the magnetic base. Should I ever need to move the light, I could easily make some more (or larger) base plates, and I’d have all the flexibility I need.

What you can also see on the picture, are plenty of cobwebs (spiders must have some predilection for workshops) and plenty of dust. I still need to get myself a proper air filter, the vacuum just doesn’t pick up all the dust in the air.

ceiling-lightAnd then I spent an entire weekend making myself an adjustable light. I constructed a revolving base, which is mounted onto a large piece of plywood (for easy mounting on the ceiling). Attached to that base is an arm with a knee joint. At the front of the arm is a headplate wth 2 spotlights attached to it. The whole thing has 4 degrees of freedom, works really well. If I had to do it again, I’d probably make a few modifications to improve on it, but for now, this does the trick.

Initially I had 2 50W halogen bulbs in there, but I soon realized that this was going to burn me ears off. So I replaced them with LED lights, and now it works beautifully. I can even use it put lots of light onto my work bench on the other side of the workshop, where I do a lot of my decorating, carving and finishing.

lathe-and-lightAll of the lights are wired into a power extension which itself is wired in parallel with the main light in the shed, so I can switch all of the lights on with the main switch.

If you struggle with light around your lathe, I’d seriously recommend doing something similar. It is money well spent, I promise.

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The wash basin

Posted on 2. February 2015 by fuzzy

The other day I got some odd pieces from my tree surgeon. A few of them were hard maple, with quite a bit of curling and quilting going on. They were all dry as bones, as he had them in his storage pile for several years, and was just sorting out another load of firewood. Luckily enough by now he knows what I am looking for and puts these little gems aside for my next visit.

One of them instantly inspired me to do something a little different. Turned one side totally off the centre (but between centres), then sanded all the square sides, and finally mounted it to its real centre and put the bowl in:

washbasin-bowlWhen I showed it to my wife, she immediately said: looks like a mini wash basin to me. Bless her, she does have a way with words.

To be honest, she is actually right, it does look a little like that. It’s not finished yet. still needs a lot of sanding, and then probably a wax finish, and some polishing. We’ll see.

 

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