Friday, July 14, 2017

Mid Summer Goings On: Fruit platters, new forms, and fighting with the cats

Hi Everyone,

Well it's the middle of July and I don't know about you but I've had a busy summer making spoons and turning platters out of pine, oak, and other woods. Here's an update on my work:

The platters have gone well. I've made several out of some thick blue stain pine which is quickly becoming my favorite wood. I've also been working on some laminated red oak platters and here's what that looks like:



I like turning oak and I'm going to be doing more of that later on this year.

I've also branched out somewhat and I've begun hand carving some trays. This is a prototype out of pine that I made earlier this week. There's no law that says a fruit platter has to be round:






And there's no law that says a platter has to have a solid center either. This is out of basswood and I'm still fiddling around with it. I've turned the basic shape and hollowed it out on the lathe and then I carved the surface with a gouge. It looks a little busy so I'll be refining that over the coming days:
 


And of course the Ginger Majesties had to get into the act and decided to make me look stupid, which isn't too hard to do at times:

I will be taking the month of August off so we'll all meet up again in September.

See you all soon and have a terrific summer,
VW