The Purple Heart Bowl Project, postponed

 Hi Everyone,

I ran into some technical issued with the purple heart turning blank and so I am postponing this project until later this year or possibly next spring. 

I have decided to move ahead however with a large, kiln dried piece of hickory lumber and I'll do this project in a separate blog.

See the next posting.

VW

The Purple Heart Bowl, continued

 Hi Everyone,

Well I had the surgery on my hand and it's feeling fine so I decided it was time to go outside and do some turning. Here we go:

Since this is a large, wide, and very heavy turning blank it merits a large faceplate. This one is from One Way faceplates, it's cast iron, and it weighs 8 pounds and has lots of screw holes. I decided to use the outer row of screw holes to minimize any wobbling of the blank as it spins. It's also mounted on what will be the top of the bowl and this is so I can turn the underside of the bowl first:

Now since my hand is getting a little painful, I'm going to stop and tomorrow I'll get some help mounting this on the lathe.

See you tomorrow.
VW

The Purple Heart Bowl project

 Hello All,

Well, this summer is turning into a very busy time. I'm working on a bathroom remodel, painting the interior of my home, and starting up my art and woodworking activities again. And I have a very special project to do: a large wooden bowl out of solid purple heart.

Here's the background:
My internist is retiring. She has been taking care of me and my husband for over 20 years now and after many years of medical practice is moving on. Her last day is August 4.

I've known about her upcoming retirement for a while and I've planning this project for several months. I considered another laminated bowl, and you've seen me make those in past postings, but I decided on a bowl blank out of solid wood. And I got lucky-I found a solid, kiln-dried bowl blank out of purple heart so that's what the bowl will be made out of.*

Plans:
This is a huge bowl blank-it's17" wide x 3" thick and it's pretty heavy. It's kiln-dried and came coated in wax, including the edges. So cracks or splitting and ready to go. I'm going to turn a shallow, wide bowl, and finish it with General Finishes salad bowl varnish so she can use it for serving food. And I'm going to sand the daylights out of the surface.

Here are a couple of preliminary photos to start with:

You can see this has great color and no sap wood: 

After examining it, I located the center of the block so as to get the faceplate centered: 

And I got the lathe ready to go:

And given that the blank is so wide, I'm going to use my largest faceplate for this: 

And this is what it's going to look like when I screw it down tomorrow: 

I'll check all my turning chisels tomorrow and fix anything that needs fixing. The first step will be mounting this on the lathe and even up the sides and face of the blank.

Ok, I'm back in the saddle again. Let's get going!

Stay tuned,
VW

*The wood blank came from Got Wood at https://www.turningblanks.net/collections/kiln-dried-woods

Coat Hook Rack-finish photos

 Hi Everyone,

I've finally gotten some spare time today after a very busy week to finish the coat hook racks. Here's the photos and explanation:

The construction of the rack is pretty simple and finishing it was as well. I used General Finishes gel finish in Candlelight and it looks good. It's gives the pine a rustic look. I used a clear spray finish over the stain, and I used some very simple metal coat hooks from the local big box store:

And that was it.

The rack is long enough to mount through the sheet rock and into the wooden studs underneath. The studs here locally are 18" apart. As the racks are 51 inches long, there is enough room for several screws. 

I think we can stick a fork in it and call it done.

________________________________

The next project is a very simple coffee cup cabinet with narrow shelves for my daughter-in-laws pottery cups and I'll show that one to you too.

After this come the first turning project of the year-a fruit bowl made on the lathe.

See you all soon,
VW

Coat Hook Rack Project, continued

 Hello All,

I finished building the coat racks and I sanded them smooth and trimmed the ends. And lastly I stained them.

Here's the photos:

Here's one of the finished racks. It's 50 inches long:

And this is a photo of the profile:

My back suddenly decided to really begin hurting so I didn't get a photo of the stain I used. It's a gel stain by General Finishes called Candlelight. It's really pretty.

Ok, tomorrow I'll apply the first of two coats of polyurethane and I'll also go and purchase some coat hooks.

I'm going to go and sit down.

See you tomorrow,
VW

Hello, I'm back with a new project

 Hello All,
Well, it's been a very long time since I've made anything or done any posts. I needed some down time to re-think my craft endeavors and to think and explore other ways of making furniture, bowls, and other things. I've also explored other media such as clay and painting which I'm going to be working on later this summer. It's been a fruitful time and I hope this time off is reflected in my work.

So I have a simple project to begin with: a coat hook rack for clothing, bags, hats, or anything that can be hung on a wall. 

Discussion & Plans

A few years back I made a simple coat rack out of pine and some fancy coat hooks that I applied to one of our bedroom walls. It's held scarves, bags,  hats, umbrellas, all kinds of stuff, in an organized manner. And it looked good too. My daughter-in-law used it for a while to hang belongings on and at present it's in the closed in the master bedroom. 

Here's a photo:

As you can see it's a simple project made out of common pine and coat hooks. This one is about 52 inches long, 5 inches wide and has a narrow shelf on the top that is about 2 1/2 inches wide, and we place lent rollers on it. And it's screwed into the wall studs with self tapping screws. 

My daughter in law needs two of these so I purchased some 1"x8"x8' long common pine boards and proceeded to rip them both down to about 6" wide. The long strips of waste wood became a narrow shelf on the top and a 1/2"x1/4" thick strip hides the joint underneath and gives the rack a little bit of visual interest. I also sanded the wood smooth with 150 grit sandpaper:

I glued the top piece down and glued and glued and nailed the narrow piece: 

I will be trimming the ends down when the glue is dry:

And here is the rack right now. Later this evening I'll take this out of the clamps and construct the second rack and let the glue dry over night: 

When I'm done building them, I'll stain them coat them with polyurethane and attach 6 hooks per board.

Stay tuned.

VW

End Grain Cutting Board-Completion Photos

 Hi Everyone,

Well, I finished it and here it is:

It's hot here and the glue dried a lot sooner than I expected so I went and took it out of the clamps, trimmed the edges and sanded the top and bottom smooth with a belt sander. As for the finish, since oil finishes tend to soften soft woods, I used General Finishes Salad bowl finish on all the sides. It will probably take a number of coats of finish to really seal the top as end grain tends to absorb finishes like a sponge.

The only thing else I wish I could do is chamfer the edges but I'd have to take my table saw apart and remove the splitter to do so. But I did ease the edges with some sand paper and that will have to be it for now.

Here's several more photos:

I think this project is doable but with harder wood and given that everything is costing more this year, finding wood for this is going to be a challenge. If I can get some suitable and reasonably priced wood I'll do an initial run of 6 boards and see how this goes.

I'm going to use this in my own kitchen and see how it holds up.

Ok, I'm going be doing some painting and some maintenance on some of our deck furniture so I'm going to be gone for a couple of weeks. When I come back I'm going to make some more yarn lazy susan's with some improvements and I'll blog about that.

Stay cool everyone,

VW