Salt Cellars-Completion Photos

 Hi Everyone,

The salt cellar lids are finished-here's a couple of photos:

The lids are redwood, furniture grade plywood with black walnut, cumaru and hard maple, hard maple and jatoba. All are finished with polyurethane.

The next and last project for the season will be the wedding present bowl. Stay tuned.

VW

Salt Cellars-Part 2-Preparing the Lids for Turning

 Hi Everyone,

Well I made it back down to the wood shop and worked on the lids some more. I've got three lids ready for the final shaping on the lathe and the fourth lid laminated and drying inside. Here's the photos:

The first thing I did was true up the lid blanks and then I turned all of them round and to their final diameter. Two of the lids will have blocks added to the top in contrasting colors. I also drilled holes in the centers so I can glue and screw the blocks and the lid blanks together: 

In this photo you can see those two blocks have the blocks glued on. The screw and glue together will help the block withstand the rigors of turning and not pop off while their spinning. You can also see the redwood blank is rounded off and ready to go:

Later this weekend I'll begin the final turning for all the blocks and they'll be ready for finishing early next week.

Stay tuned,

VW

Salt Cellars-Part 1: Discussion and Preparing the Lids

 Hi Everyone,

The holidays are coming up and that means lots of holiday bazaars. If you're a wood worker you've probably been asked if you can donate a few items for sale (or sell your own creations). This is a good time to go through your scrap lumber and pick out the choice pieces you've got squirreled away and make use of them. And as this uses empty, small glass jars, it's a great way to recycle.

I use canning jars that I've lost the lids to, along with other odd shaped jars, and turn small lids for them. Some of them work well as salt cellars and others are good for spices, small jewelry, or as gift boxes for small items:

This makes a fun day project and it's a great way to use that micro turning set I know you all have in a drawer someplace.

Here's a couple of photos to start with:

In this photo you can see the jars I'm going to use and some small pieces of scrap wood leftover from earlier projects. I keep small lid-sized pieces of wood and smaller pieces for knobs-that's what those cube-sized pieces are for. I'm going to drill a 1" diameter hole which will serve as the attachment point for the nova chuck, and I'll drill a small screw hold into that larger hole. Then I'll drill a matching screw hole into the small cubes and screw the lid piece and the knob piece together before turning. That will give me a lid with two colors of wood instead of just one color. 
I also will be cutting out lid-sized circles out of the lid pieces. 

The thick reddish piece of wood in the photo is a piece of redwood. It's a soft wood and requires sharp tools and a fast turning speed but it looks lovely when turned. I am also laminating a small block out of furniture-grade plywood and thin black walnut:

The laminated block and the redwood block will be thick enough to turn a knob from so they do not need a separate piece of wood for that.

Ok, I have some gardening to do as it's getting cold here but I will try and get back to the shop later today and do an additional blog post. 

Stay tuned,
VW

Laminated Fruit Bowl Project-Completion Photos

 Hello All,

Well, the last coat of finish went on the bowl this morning and it's dry enough to pick it up. I'm very pleased with the way it came out and it holds a lot of fruit. 
Here's the photos:

 

The bowl is quite shallow but it can hold more fruit in it than a bowl of the same diameter with higher sides. If you need to make a large bowl to hold things in you might consider a flatter design. Works well.

My next project is a large laminated bowl for a wedding gift and several wooden tops for some small glass jars. These make good gift boxes, or small jewelry boxes or salt cellars and they're easy to make and a good way to get at your scrap wood pile.

The weather here is turning cooler so I'm not sure how long I'll be able to stay open.  At any rate thanks for stopping by the woodshop. I'll see you all soon.

VW

Laminated Fruit Bowl project, continued-sanding and ready to finish

 Hello Everyone,

Well, the fruit bowl needed just a bit of sanding to smooth the surface of the bowl. I did that and took it off the lathe for a few photos:

Here is the bowl with some apples so you can kind of understand the depth of the bowl. It can accommodate round fruits and also flat ones like bananas without falling out of the bowl:

Here is the bowl without anything in it:

And of course the rotten cats insisted on this:

Tomorrow I'll begin applying a salad bowl finish to the bowl.

See you tomorrow,
VW

Laminated Fruit Bowl project, continued

 Hello All,
I got outside early today and finished the underside of the bowl and flipped it over and hallowed it out. Here are today's photos:

The first thing I had to do was create a slot for the Nova Chuck and that went very well. The slot is about 1/2" deep and it's dove tailed. It made the turning blank fit very securely:

The blank has several challenges-it isn't very thick (1 1/2" thick) and I've already cut into it with the 1/2" deep slot. That doesn't leave a lot of wood left to create an arc-shaped bowl interior so I'll have to be careful with this turn, otherwise it's possible to cut completely through to the slot and the top of the wood vice. Not a good idea.
The other problem are the screw holes leftover from the face plate and the same problem applies-not a lot of wood to turn off so as to remove the holes which are visible in the middle of the bowl and you can see them clearly in the photo. So this is going to be a careful turning:

Here's another problem-the wood fibers along the edge of the blank tore yesterday leaving some pitting and holes. That needs to be dealt with carefully as it's easy to damage the edge. A fast turn speed and a very sharp skew chisel will take care of that:

And you can see that the edge got smoothed out:

I kept on turning and slowly removed the interior of the blank to create a bowl and did some preliminary sanding. The screw holes are gone and I didn't damage the blank while turning it. I did get some ridges in the surface, which look wavy in the photograph. I'm a little out of practice as I haven't made a wide flat tray or bowl on the lathe in quite a while so I'll have to flatten that out:

I kept turning and sanding and the bowl is in much better shape now. You can see the arc-shaped surfaces in the next couple of photos:

Tomorrow I'm going to sand the interior surface of the bowl and get it ready for a finish. See you then.

VW

Laminated Fruit Bowl Project

 Hello Everyone,

Well, it's been a long summer and the serving tray project has morphed into a fruit bowl project. I'll spare you the reason why the project was delayed and apologize to everyone for the delay.

The turning block I made is simply made up of randomly placed lengths of scrap hardwood I purchased from my friends the cabinetmakers and it has a faceplate screwed to it to attach it to the lathe.

What is new is the lathe extension I got last Christmas. My husband gave me a hand attaching it to the lathe and lo and behold, it works perfectly. I can now turn blanks up to 20 inches in diameter:

 

So I attached it to the lathe and began by truing up the blank and then turning the underside of the bowl. I've got it sanded smooth but I'll still need to cut a slot in the foot of the bowl so I can use the large Nova chuck I have so as to re-attach it to the lathe.

Tomorrow I'll flip it over the hallow out the bowl but in the meantime here are a couple of photos:

Here is the set up ready to go. The extension comes with a tool rest extension:

And here are a couple of photos of the foot of the bowl and the rest of the underside of the bowl:

So that was it for today. Tomorrow I'll hallow it out.

Stay tuned,
VW