Wood Pegging-discussion and comment

Hi Again,

I've been really busy in the wood shop lately making a lot of platters and fruit bowls for an upcoming farmer's market and I've been thinking about adding a little more exterior adornment to the items that I make. In fact, I've been thinking about that for a long time.

Normally I prefer to let the grain pattern and the wood color provide the visual interest in a turned piece and most people like that. But not ever piece of wood I turn is spectacular looking and I would like to just try to experiment a little bit. It can't hurt.

So I decided to try pegging, which involves drilling a hole or series of holes, in the surface of a wood turning blank and then inserting a wooden peg of a different color with the hope of producing an interesting pattern or design.

So here's what I did-

I was turning a piece of hard maple, my favorite turning wood, and encountering quite a lot of difficulty. The grain of the wood was very wavy and I was getting a lot of tear out (even though I love to work with maple, I'm constrained by the fact that it doesn't always love me in return). So I decided to stop and sharpen everything and then I thought, "Aha!" Great time to try something a little different and if it didn't work out, well, I'd turn it into a Frisbee or something else. So I proceeded to drill a lot of holes into the surface of the blank and hammer a lot of wooden pegs into the surface.

Sigh, here are the photos:

Here's the blank. I merrily drilled away on the surface and then when I got to the last hole I took a look at it and thought, "That's a helluva lot of holes."

I cut a corresponding large number of pegs out of walnut, cherry, and oak for the contrast and began pounding them in:

Here it is full of pegs. It almost looks like some kind of game:

And then I placed it on the lathe and proceeded to turn it flat. I had a helluva time with the maple as it kept chipping and I had some tear out on the pegs:

It took quite a while to get the surface flat but I finally did and I've sanded it a little. Then I brought it upstairs and oiled it. It's not bad looking if you like a lot of dots:

Comments
The next time I do this I'm not going to place them on such a wide flat surface. This led in part to the tear out on the surface of the pegs. Next time I'll try this on the edge of something.
I'll also cut the pegs exactly to size and then set them just slightly below the surface of the surrounding wood. This will allow me to sand instead of cut and hopefully not damage the surface of the peg.
And I won't drill so many holes. I'll be a lot more cognizant of the design.

Well, it looks like I've got a new bread board.

See you later,

VW