Knotty problems-working with knots in wood

Hi Everyone,
Well, it's been raining a lot here but the good news is that everything is green and flowers are beginning to blossom. Sounds like good bowl turning weather to me!

I have a quantity of western red cedar in the wood shop that I need to turn into bowls this spring and I turned one this morning:

A common thing to see in wood, especially softwoods like cedar and pine, are knots. Knots and the surrounding wood are lovely and you can see the amazing detail in this photo and the one below it:

Knots can cause problems: they can loosen and drop out of a turned piece leaving a big hole. Since the pith of the tree is present in a knot, it can crack radially. And cracking can cause the entire knot to crack into to several pieces and basically ruin a turned piece.

I do love to turn bowls out of solid pine and cedar logs but knots are always going to be a problem in those species so I do several things to deal with this:

1. Inspect the log section carefully and make sure there are no loose knots. If I find that I set the wood aside. I will turn a log if the knots are well integrated into the surround wood.

2. Once the blank is stable and balanced, I turn up the speed and make sure my turning chisels are really sharp. This results in a nice, smooth surface across the knot.

3. Do the entire turn in one session,

4. When I'm done cutting and finishing the bowl I treat it with Pentacryl, a wood stabilizer. I apply a very liberal coat of Pentacryl daily for about 4 days and when that's finished, I place the bowl in a large, heavy grocery bag and let it sit for about a month. This will stabilize the knot and all of the rest of the wood and make it very stable. I've had minor cracking by doing this but never major cracking and I've never lost a bowl. Knock on wood.

Always inspect your logs carefully before turning them and reject or trim away problem areas. You can't avoid problems 100% of the time, but you can avoid most turning difficulties with knots.

VW

Selkie Wood Works and the Eagan Market Fest

Hi Everyone,
Well, the big day is finally in sight: I will be at this year's Eagan Market Fest on June 11 and August 20 from 4-8 pm. I'll have a variety of stuff for sale: bowls, plates, platters, cutting boards, and lots of other stuff. If you're in the Twin Cities, drop by the fest and get some tomatoes and come and see me and say hi. I'll be thrilled if you do so. And so will the wood fairies.

See you all soon,
VW

Welcome to the 2nd Annual Mother's Day Turn - O - Rama! The kitchen mallet turning project

Hi Everyone,

First of all Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there wherever you may be and a very special day to all of you moms who work in wood-may your tools always be sharp and you never run out of wood!

Today's turning project is my absolute favorite thing to turn: a kitchen mallet and here is a photo of the one I've made:

I've been making these for a while now and they are very simple to make. All of the mallets I've made have been made from baseball bat billets that come from a supplier in Washington state called Fine Hardwoods. They specialize in bat billets and I use the fungo bat billets that they sell. The lumber is perfectly dried, straight grained, and very solid and heavy which is what you want for a kitchen mallet. While I've never used a laminated billet for this, I don't see why you couldn't use this provided it's well laminated and it's made from hardwood. To finish the mallet, I used mineral oil.

The billets are 36" in length and 3" in diameter and I have maple, red birch, and ash in stock. The billets also make terrific rolling pins.

I know what you're thinking at this point-why would anyone want a kitchen mallet? These are really good for pounding meat, crushing fruit for jam making, breaking up ice or breaking up bags of frozen veggies, AND they make the best mashed potatoes in town! And you can use the narrow end to crush herbs or seeds. The mallet can be used on both ends and as the ends are rounded, you can use them in a bowl. And if you have friends or family who are foodies, they make a terrific gift.

Ok, time to get started! Here's the photos:

I cut off a 10" section from a red birch billet and mounted it between centers for turning:

And I marked off approximately 1" on both ends as waste. You can skip this step and use a billet that is 8" in length-you'll have a mallet at the end with holes that will need to be doweled but that isn't a problem:

Here you can see the ends have been turned down to about 1" in diameter. This will allow me to reach and shape the ends of the mallet a little more easily:

Next I've marked off the section that will become the handle. This is 4" long and the handle is important-it has to fit an adult hand comfortably so don't stint on this section of the mallet:

Here you can see that I've begun to narrow it down. I used my large roughing gouge for this but a spindle gouge will work well here too:

In this photo I've begun to shape the narrow end of the mallet:

And here it is a few minutes later. You can see the basic shape beginning to form:

Now I'm going to begin shaping the large end of the mallet on the left:

...this involves narrowing down the section closest to the handle and leaving the wide end as wide as possible. You want the mallet end to be wide, slightly rounded, and heavy. This really saves your hands if you have a lot of pounding to do:

In this photo I've flipped the mallet around and I'm beginning to round off the narrow end of the mallet:

Here's a closeup of the narrow end:

Here is a photo of the wide end of the mallet after it's been shaped:

Next I sanded it to 250 grit and oiled it well with mineral oil. It's still attached to the lathe at this point:

After the above photo, I took a fine toothed saw and cut off the waste wood on the ends. Then I filed the ends smooth. Here is a photo of the narrow end. It's been smoothed and oiled:

And this is the wide end of the mallet. It hasn't been oiled yet. It also got a generous layer of oil applied to the surface:

And here is the finished mallet:

And that's it. It took me about an hour to make this.

I've gotten the dates for the farmer's market I'm going to be selling at and I'll announce those tomorrow.

Thanks for dropping by the wood shop. Have a great day and see you soon.
VW

The Amazing Henri Le Chat Noir-Video 9: The Blight of Spring

Hi Everyone,

I'm taking a break today and getting ready for the annual Mother's Day Turn-O-Rama and it just so happens that my favorite cat, Henri Le Chat Noir, has released his latest video. More about that in a second.

My friends who know me personally know that I love cats and my favorite on-line feline is without a doubt Henri Le Chat Noir. Created by Seattle film maker Will Braden, Henri's videos feature him ruminating about all the little indignities of life, his never ending battle with ennui, his less-than perfect feline companions, and never ever having enough Party Mix to snack on.

I've enjoyed all his videos and this is the 9th video which is pretty funny and here it is:

I completely sympathize with Henri. It's like having a wood lathe but not enough wood to turn...sigh...

See you later this weekend,
VW

The Annual Mother's Day Turn-O-Rama is Coming!

Hi Everyone,

Well, Mother's Day in the US is almost upon us and it's time to announce this year's project: It's the SWW Kitchen Mallet. This is a never before seen project so it's a brand new posting. It's not difficult to do and it's my favorite turning project and if you're a foodie and really enjoy cooking, it's something you should not be without.

Drop by the SWW blog on Sunday and see this year's event!!

VW

Mother's Day Presents for the Mom who does Wood Working

Hi Everyone,

Well, I apologize for not posting but I've been incredibly busy getting ready for a farmer's market here locally that I plan to sell some of my work at. As I'm having some electrical issues in the shop at the moment, I thought I'd write up a list of suggested Mother's Day presents for the mom who does wood working!

SWW Top Ten Suggestions

1. Hey, get your mom a lathe! That's not as crazy as it sounds. Wood turning is a rather unusual type of wood working and not many people have tried turning. There are many small and mid-sized lathes available these days and quite a few things can be turned on lathes of this size.

2. If you're going to get her a lathe, a good set of turning chisels are the next thing she needs. I use Robert Sorby tools and they are really good tools. Something to think about. If your mom is already a wood turner, ask her what chisel she would absolutely love to have but doesn't.

3. A good set of twist drill bits-and I don't mean the crummy, on sale ones at home improvement centers. Spend a couple of bucks and get some good, high quality stainless steel ones. A couple of Forstner bits wouldn't hurt either.

4. Decent shop lighting-I know this is a big one, but some new lighting in her shop would be a very considerate thing to get.

5. If she has a table saw, some well made table saw attachments would be nice to have. Those can really extend the functionality of a table saw.

6. Safety glasses in her current eye glass prescription.

7. Wood-take her to a good quality lumber yard and purchase some lumber for her. My husband did that for me several years ago and it was great. For the same price as flowers I got some great quality hickory.

8. Shop shelving-you can never have too much shelf space.

9. If your mom enjoys wood carving, a good quality hatchet or a new carving tool would be very thoughtful. I know that sounds a little crazy, but if she harvests and uses tree trunks and branches, a good hand axe is a welcome thing.

10. And if you are really at a loss as to what to get her, ask her if you can use her shop and go down there and make her a cutting board out of some scrap lumber (trust me, if she works with wood, she has scrap lumber). If she's like me she probably uses scrap lumber as a cutting board in her kitchen and I just know she'd love it if you made her something out of wood that she could really use. And be sure and clean up when you're done.

See you all soon,
VW

The Coffee Scoop Project Revisited-Grrrr and comment

Good Morning Everyone,

Well, we have some stormy weather ahead later today so I thought I'd go down to the wood shop and do a little turning and I decided to try to make a coffee scoop yet again. But first the background on this:

I have long been a big fan of turner Stephen Hogbin, the Canadian artist. He has been professionally active since the 1960's and was one of the turners in the 1960s & 1970s who took wood turning from an industrial craft to an art form. His work is really quite incredible.
Anyway, a copy of his latest book Hogbin on Woodturning came in the mail yesterday and I spent last night and most of the early hours of this morning reading and studying it.

Hogbin is well known for constructing laminated blocks, turning them resulting block to shape and then disassembling it into pieces and re-building the pieces into an entirely different shape. One of his simpler projects are his well known salad servers. These are a pair of spoons that are created out of either a solid spindle block or a laminated block, turned, and then the whole thing is split into two pieces. The bowl is hand carved and with that you have two identical spoons. Here is a link to a photograph: Stephen Hogbin spoons.

I think the servers he makes are pretty cool and so I decided to try the ill-fated, never accomplished coffee scoop project from several years ago and no wanting to be wasteful, I decided to use the rolling pin that began to de-laminate several days ago and make a scoop out of it.

Here's what happened:

Ok, here's the rolling pin that I made and that I used for this project:

I took the pin and cut it in half and mounted it on the lathe:

And turned it down to a spoon shape:

And then I cut it in half length wise on the bandsaw. So far so good:

I drilled a shallow starter hole in the center and began to hand carve the bowl of the spoon. My enthusiasm was beginning to grow. I might actually get a coffee scoop this time!

As the wind outside was beginning to pick up and it was getting rather cold, I decided to speed things up a bit and go and get the Dremel tool with a round Kutzall tip and hurry the hollowing part of the project up:

Once I got it sufficiently hollowed out I picked up my gouge and began to finish carving the bowl. It was almost finished when -CRACK!-the red Brazilian cherry layer suddenly broke:

So I chipped off the rest of the red layer off and began carving out the remainder of the bowl by hand. Then the rim broke and that was the end of this project:

Comment:

Well, white oak is a little too coarse for this type of carving and I'm avoiding laminated blanks for this. I'm going to try it again later today with some red birch which is softer and has a finer, closed grain that should hold up better.

More later

VW