Fall Art Show-Box lid, continued

Ok everyone,

I had a late breakfast, some coffee, and I thought about the lid. And as they say in that great Jim Carey film Mask, "Hold on to your lug nuts, it's time for an overhaul!!!"

Here we go,

When last we met, I had just finished roughly shaping the lid out of hickory. Now it's time to do some intermediate shaping so back on the lathe it went:

First I narrowed the diameter:

Next, I began to shape the top of the lid:

After several minutes of turning this is what the lid looked like. I could have stopped there and had a perfectly acceptable lid but I decided to take it further so I turned it more:

And this is where I stopped. I added a second rim and got rid of the button in the center:

And then I sanded it smooth:

 I was going to stain it red, but I remembered a had a cabernet-colored stain left over from a project last year and so I applied the reddish purple stain to the lid after I applied a sealer to it:

This is what it looked like from the side. I decided to stain it again:

And so I put it back on the lathe and applied another coat of stain:

The next question to answer is does it need a finial? Is the top too flat for the box? I'm not sure so I prepared the purpleheart and bubinga blocks by turning them both to a cylinder shape. This is the purpleheart block:

 And this is the bubinga block on the right side.

Which one will I use? Well if I decide to attach some wood and turn a finial, first I'll put the lid back on the lathe tomorrow after it has dried and flatten the top. Then I'll attach a piece of one of the blocks onto the top with glue and a wood screw and then turn it into a shape of some sort.

So come back tomorrow and we'll see where this goes.

VW