Wednesday's Wisdom For Woodturners August 31, 2022

[lew]

Last day of August! Where did the summer go?!?!?

 

 

Our Patriot Turners-

Our turners have been busy this week!

 

@Gerald posted about a novel idea for embellishing a turning.

 

 

He describes the materials he used and how he obtained the neat colorization in his post-

 

 

@Gunny posted this in the "What's on tour weekend agenda"-

 

Gunny has these down to an art!

 

 

@forty_caliber finished up a bowl he started a while back. The grain and color in this one is incredible!

 

 

He explains the name in his post-

 

 

@RustyFN posted his beautiful Calabash bowl. 

 

 

He received lots of positive comments and @Gerald was kind enough to post a couple of his bowls for comparison.

 

 

What’s Coming Up-

Hold onto your hats- lots coming up in the near future!

 

A bunch from the AAW. Click on the images for links and information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For The Newbies-

Jim Rodgers continues his instruction on how/why catches happen. In this one, Jim discusses the scraper-

 

 

 

Expand Your Horizons-

Mike Waldt turns and embellishes an ash hollow form-

 

 

...and a Yew lidded box

 

 

Seems we have been really concentrating on making scoops. Another idea but quite different than the previous designs-

 

 

 

New Turning Items-

SWAT was this past weekend. Cindy Drozda took the opportunity to video many of the vendors and their products. She was live on several occasions. She has posted some of the material on her YouTube Channel.

 

The link to her channel- https://www.youtube.com/user/cindydrozda

 

 

Craft Supplies USA is having a closeout on a bunch of their products. Some good prices!

 

https://www.woodturnerscatalog.com/Sales/20/Closeout?utm_source=csusa&utm_medium=email&utm_content=closeout&utm_campaign=22-08-closeout

 

 

Woodturners Wonders Weekly sale:

https://woodturnerswonders.com/collections/weekly-sale

 

 

A couple of weeks ago we mentioned the 3M Xtract sand paper. Taylor Toolworks is currently having a sale on the product-

 

https://taytools.com/collections/3m-xtract?afmc=17p&utm_campaign=17p&utm_source=leaddyno&utm_medium=affiliate

 

 

 

Everything Else-

Rick Morris must be on vacation this week- He didn't post his usual list of turning videos.

 

Tim Yoder is always a lot of fun to watch-

 

 

 

 

I've been kicking this idea around for a while. Usually, when I make a lidded container, I will use contrasting species for the lid and body. Some things like pepper mills are made from a single piece of the same species. Cutting the blank in half and then creating a tenon can cause a noticeable grain mismatch where the cut/tenon is created. 

 

I was watching one of Cindy Drozda's live tool talks and she described a technique that minimizes the material loss and grain mismatch. After cutting the blank, it is glued back together with a sacrificial piece between the halves. This sacrificial piece becomes the tenon.

 

My first attempt at this was a miserable failure.

 

 

The cuts were not clean enough to create a good glue joint. 

 

I'm thinking I need a way to ensure the pieces will look seamless when mated together. My next try was a little better. The first thing was to create a sharp cut with no tear out. I forgot to take a picture in my haste but I used a skew chisel to start the separation cut. Then used my freshly sharpened, shop made, thin parting tool. Also cranked the lathe speed way up to part off the pieces-

 

I did not create a tenon. Instead, I decided to turn tight fitting plug that would be used as the lid tenon. Mortice in one end-

 

Fitting the plug

 

Glue the plug into one of the mortices- the lid on this one.

 

 

Trim the plug so the two halves fit together-

 

 

Carefully hollow out the insides making certain not to touch the plug mating surfaces. I did not spend a lot of time sanding the inside. My main goal was to see if the plug idea would work.

 

 

Some sanding on the outside and testing the grain match-

 

 

 

Had to play a little to fancy up the very plain shape-

 

 

I think this will have a much great effect when used on highly figured wood. This was from a very old piece of air dried walnut. Quite brittle.

 

Safe turning

 

Edited September 2, 2022 by lew

[Gerald]

Thanks for your post Lew. I really like the idea you came up with for the grain match. Been working on some ideas on muchrooms such as doing offset so the head is at an angle but more on that later.

[HandyDan]

Thanks for the recap. I somehow missed @Gunny 's post on his wine glass turning.   I'm intrigued with the project you are currently working on.  Looks great and the glued in tenon is outside the box thinking on Cindy's part.  Definitely something for future experimenting.

[lew]

@Gerald  Thank You!

 

@HandyDan Thanks!