Small Gift Boxes continued: The Hackberry Box

Hi Everyone,

Well it's Tuesday and it's time to get back down to the wood shop and do some work.

Picking up where we left off-it's time to work on the lids for the gift boxes and possibly refine the designs a little bit so we're going to work on the hackberry box first.

This box if you remember wasn't my favorite of the lot. The wood is very soft and friable and it tears the second a tool is applied to the surface. And the color wasn't at all interesting. I turned it into a small calabash shape and left it for the weekend to think about it a bit.

I decided to leave this box alone as it has a good shape for it's size and the color isn't the worst thing in the world. It does need a well thought out lid to take it from a small wooden box to something that is eye pleasing and useful.

I looked through some books and decided to make a Raffan-style lid for it. Raffan boxes are named after Richard Raffan, the Australian wood turner who popularized this style and is well known in the wood turning world (you can see his webpage and his box style at http://www.richardraffan.com/node/105). The boxes have lids which tend to be rounded, often employ a flange-like structure at the base of the lid, and often feature short, triangular-shaped finials on them.

I think a Raffan-style lid is what the box needs and so I'm going to give it a shot.

Here we go:

I have a lovely scrap piece of maple in the shop and I thought the color would work well with the box so I proceeded to make a turning blank and place it on the lathe:

A split second after I gently touched the wood with the tool, it promptly split off a big chunk of wood. So this had to be discarded and I started over again:

I looked around the shop and I didn't immediately see anything that would work for the lid. As I was beginning to do the wringing of hands-knashing of teeth thing, I spotted a small block of linden wood and decided to make the lid out of this. It's the right color, and it's thick enough for what I needed it for:

So I placed it on the lathe and turned a small tenon on the top:

And flipped it over to turn the tenon on the underside which will fit into the box:

And since linden wood is soft, that took all of about 2 minutes to do:

Once that was finished I flipped it over again and began to shape the top of the lid:

First I trued up the edge:

And then took it off the lathe and set it on the box. It's wide enough to proceed:

This lid is going to have a finial on the top, a rounded center, and a flange on the base. The first thing I did was to remove the wood between the two lines on the lid in the photograph:

And this step produced this shape. Next I rounded off the sloping area and rounded off the edges of the flange:

 And I took it off the lathe to look at it again. The finial needs to be created next:

Here you can see the finial on the top. I turned away some of the rounded section and flattened it a little-I thought it was beginning to take on that hand-grenade shape I seem to be famous for. This gave me material to turn the finial. Here it is with a finial:

I then smoothed the edges and narrowed the finial just a little and then sanded it. Hmmm, it doesn't look half bad.
I'm going to stop with this box and look at it for another day or so and then determine whether to discard it and begin again or to finish it off.

The next box to deal with is the cedar of Lebanon box. As it's really hot here, I'm going to stop here momentarily and go inside and cool off a bit. Be back in a few minutes.

VW

Cable Found!! Project photos for Small Gift Boxes

Hooray!  We found the cable! I left it on my front porch so no cat tricks today.

Ok here are some photos from today's turning:

Here is the cedar of Lebanon block being turned into a box. I've smoothed the sides:

Here is the same box being hollowed out:

This wood is really soft and it tears very easily. Here in the photo below is the box after it's been sanded:

And here are two of the boxes thus far-the hackberry on the left and the cedar of lebanon on the right:

 Here is the last blank to be turned-the camphor wood blank. I love the scent from camphor wood. Everything smells like Vicks Vapo Rub:

Normally camphor is a deep gold color but this block has reds and rusts in it too:

Here is the bottom of the box-I've drilled a hole in the bottom which I'll use as an attachment point for the Nova chuck:

LOL: this is the shavings from the hole in the photo above. Drilling with a Forstner bit always produces wide shavings. The larger the bit, the larger the shavings. Sometimes they look like potato chips or shaved chocolate if I'm working on walnut:

Ok, here are the box portion of the gift boxes. They are all sanded and ready for a finish. I'm going to use spray lacquer on them:

I took a short break after I finished the boxes and then I came outside and roughed out a bowl for a friend of mine. This is coffee wood. It is a pinkish brown and hard as a rock. It took 2 hours of constant turning to shape this. By the time I finished I was really wiped out:

Here are the boxes with a single coat of lacquer. I'll add more layers tomorrow:

Ok, the next step is to shape the lids. We'll get to that tomorrow.

Have a good evening,

VW

Small gift boxes, continued-still no camera cable

Hi Everyone,

Well, I still can't find the damn cable anywhere so there won't be any photos today. I did go down and finish off all the boxes however. I've deepened them and hollowed them out more and sanded everything smooth. So other than the finish, that portion of the project is finished. I'll work on the lids tomorrow.

After I finished the boxes, I decided to catch up on some of my turning and I turned another coffee wood bowl. This is a big bowl, very heavy, and while the last bowl was orange, this one is the pinkish brown color that I've seen in the past. It's also hard as a rock, which coffee wood usually is. I need to hollow it out just a little more and I'll tackle that tomorrow.

I've been out side turning all day and it's about 95 in the shade at the moment so I'm going to stop and go and drink a huge glass of water and then cleanup.

I'll see you all tomorrow afternoon for a brief turning session and then I'll probably turn wood again on Tuesday.

See you all then.
VW

Small Gift Boxes, continued

Good Morning All,

Well, I went down to the workshop to work on the boxes some more and I took photographs to share with all of you. When I came inside to write this post, I found that I can't find the cable for the camera so I can't download photos. I think the cats may have run off with it.

So in the meantime, I'll describe what I did: I finished turning and hollowing out the cedar of Lebanon box and then I switched over to the camphor blank. This particular piece of wood is really lovely. Normally camphor is a deep gold color but this has reds and rusts and golds and they all swirl around with each other. Very pretty and the shop smells strongly of camphor. So all of the boxes are roughed out. Since these are solid blocks they will probably distort a little over the next day or so. So I'm going to bring them inside and let them stabilize a bit. In a day or so I'll take a look at them and true them up if they need it. If not, I'll sand all of them smooth and get them ready for a finish.

Lids

All of the boxes are small-about the size of an orange-so small pieces of wood from my scrap collection will make nice lids. As the hackberry box is beige with black spalting lines, I'm going to use black walnut for that. The camphor box will have a white ash lid as the gold color of the lid will look nice with the colors in the camphor wood. The cedar of Lebanon box is a problem. Last night it looked orange. This morning it looks grey. I'm going to have to sand it and probably finish it so it won't change color and then think of a good color for it. So that one will take some extra care.

I'm going to have some lunch and then I'll go back out and do more turning this afternoon. I'll take photos of everything and if I ever find that cable, I'll post them for you to see.


VW

Life's Passages-Small gift boxes-Pt 1: box discussion and plans

Hi Everyone,

It's been a different kind of week from usual. Our family got some bad news and so here is the story behind that:

Discussion

I have a family member who got a terminal diagnosis last week. She has been fighting a particularly aggressive type of skin cancer and is losing the battle and probably doesn't have very long to live. So I have been helping her with listening and helping with errands, decision making, and hospice interviews. In the course of our discussions she hauled out her considerable jewelry collection.

She lives in a senior residence here in Minnesota and the staff there are fabulous. They do an absolutely excellent job of running the residence, planning events, helping with services (one is a social worker-God bless social workers), and generally helping a fragile group of people live independently and happily and with purpose. Those guys have been great.

So in looking at all this stuff spread out I suggested that she pick out a small piece of jewelry for each person and I would make 3 small turned wooden boxes to present them in. So that's our project for this weekend.

Plans 

I purchased 3 3"x4" diameter blocks of wood from my good friends at Turning Blanks 4U in Florida as I wanted these to be special and Steve and Diane sell terrific turning stock. I purchased a cedar of Lebanon block, a camphor block, and a hackberry block and here is the photo of those blocks:

I have never turned hackberry before so I decided to work on that block first. I had seen hackberry before at a lumber yard in Minneapolis and the wood I saw was a greyish-cream with a lot of lavender undertones to it. It is found world wide, and it's woodworking uses are for boxes, crates, and firewood. It's unusual looking and so I decided to make one of the boxes out of that. This particular block was probably cut a while ago as it's very light weight:

So I drilled a hole in one end:

... attached it to the Nova chuck:

And began to turn it. It's very soft wood, and it reminded me of the pine wood that we turned last week. It has some spalted areas in it and it's overall a beige color. It took a while to get it shaped as it's very friable:

Here is the block after about 10 minutes of turning:

And here is the block after a few minutes of sanding and hollowing out:

 We'll have to stop there.  It's admittedly not the most exciting piece of wood I've turned this year, but who knows, it might fool us later.

Next, I decided to turn the cedar of lebanon. Cedar of Lebanon is native to mountainous areas of the Middle East and Mediterranean. It's been used by people for many centuries and has been cultivated for it's resin and wood. This is also a wood that I've never turned before and it reminds me a lot of douglas fir in appearance and in scent. As it's dinner time, I decided just to even up the sides of the block and turn away the wax coating. And it does look like douglas fir.

As evening is here and it's almost dinner and mosquito time, I'm going to stop for the day. Tomorrow I'll turn the camphor block, I'll sand everything, and then we'll cogitate on lids for all these fellows.

See you tomorrow,
VW

Anniversary "Card" for my Husband-Discussion & Photo

Hi Everyone,
Well, today is not only the first day of the Minnesota State Fair, it's also my husband's and mine anniversary today.

As I usually make cards for my family out of wood, I decided to make a unique card for my husband and here it is:

This is based on the Scottish quaich which are small, wooden drinking cups made for special occasions. On the rim is a line from a Robert Browning poem, "Grow old with me for the best is yet to be..."

The cup is made out of a section of a maple tree branch from a friend's yard and I'm going to oil it later on today.

So, Happy Anniversary Jim and thanks for 32 great years.

Best,

VW

Handmade Pens

Hi Everyone,

I'm a big fan of Steve Ramsey's blog and video Woodworking for Mere Mortals. He's got great tutorials and his projects are simple, useful, and fun, and I look at his blog postings all the time. Way to go Steve.

Right now he is featuring a fellow woodworker, who's 14 and been working in wood for 2 years named Marcus Vandendaele from Harrisonville, Missouri. Marcus makes handmade pens so that means he has a lathe.  I always support fellow woodturners where ever they are so here is a plug for Marcus' online pen business.

You can see his work on his Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/MarcussHandmadePens. There are photos of his work and his contact information is on the page. Why not wander over and take a look? These would probably make incredible holiday gifts and I bet it would make the Wood Fairies happy too!

Best,
VW