Music Box Birthday Project-discussion and plans

 Hi Everyone,

 While I'm waiting for some equipment to arrive, let's get started on the music box project.

 

Discussion

I'm going to make a small music box for my grandson who will be turning 9 years old in a couple of weeks. He's a delightful little guy and I love making things for him and since he doesn't have a music box, that made deciding to do this project easy as pie.

Plans 

I'm going to start with a block of hard maple for the box part of the project that was part of the wood plank I bought for the maple salad bowl. It's 3" thick and has a 4 3/4" diameter. I turned it into a round blank last weekend and I trued up the sides. I choose maple, not only because it was readily available in the shop, but because maple is dense enough to turn the sides and especially the bottom of the box very thin.

I also have a square piece of purple heart for the beginnings of the lid. Lastly I have a music box mechanism from the folks at Music Box Attic in Canoga Park, CA. Their website has all sorts of stuff for music boxes, mechanisms, you name it. I bares taking a look at the website if you're considering a project like this.

Anyway, placing the mechanism into the box so the winding stem protrudes far enough through the bottom of the box to be easily wound but not be seen from the outside. So that's the key here.

I also ordered an extra long winding stem that is 1/2" long so the thickness of the box bottom will have to be thin enough for this.

So the first thing I'm going to do is make an outline of the bottom of the mechanism and mark out where the winding stem and screw holes go. Then I'll make a drawing of the thickness of the bottom of the box. Then I'll begin turning the box, then the lid and finial, and lastly the finish. When this is all done, it will be time to screw in the mechanism and the project will be finished.

Ok, grab some coffee and stay tuned!

VW

Hard Maple Salad Bowl project

 Hi Everyone,

The maple salad bowl project will be delayed. 

Having equipment issues.

 Stay tuned,

VW

Hard Maple Salad Bowl, continued-finishing phase

 Hi Everyone,

 Here is a photo of the bowl at present. I've finished sanding it and wiping it down to get the dust off of it:

 

 So I'll be applying the finish to the inside and outside of the bowl over the next several days. When that's finished I'll polish it and then turn it over to refine the foot and apply finish to that and then it will be done.

In the meantime I'll be gearing up for the music box project.

Stay tuned,
VW

Hard Maple Salad Bow, continued-near miss with disaster

 Hi Everyone,

 Well, I finished all of my chores for the day and decided to reward myself with several hours of wood turning. Wow, what an afternoon this turned out to be. 

I finished hollowing out the bowl, got it to the depth I wanted and it looked really great. The next step was to refine the bottom and sides of the interior and I began this with some bowl scrapers I have. The bottom looked smooth but the sides had a lot of ridges and some torn fibers that the bowl scraper wouldn't remove.  

The project had gone well up to now and I'll admit I got a little cocky and reached for the fingernail gouge to smooth out some of the issues. I adjusted the tool rest, turned on the lathe and before I knew it -BANG!!-I had a catch. Not just any catch. A catch long enough and deep enough to nearly cut the bowl in half. And it almost came off the lathe. 

I let out a big yell and stopped the lathe. My husband came out to see what was going on and my heart nearly stopped when I realized what had happened. If that bowl had come off the lathe, I'd probably be in a hospital ER someplace with some terrible injuries. And heaven knows where the bowl would be.

So I collected myself and looked at the bowl and decided I could remove the catch. So I put it back on the lathe, turned the speed down, and got out the bowl scraper again and patiently removed the catch. The walls of the bowl are still substantial and the bottom of the bowl probably closely match the thickness of the walls. So I decided to end the turn at that point and begin sanding.

Here are some photos of the bowl at this point:

Here are two photos of the inside of the bowl. I think you can see the depth of the bowl better in the first photo. The bowl is nearly 2 1/4" deep:

The next several photos should the side and the underside of the bowl. I will be removing some of the thickness of the foot of the bowl at the very end of the project:

When I stopped turning, I began sanding the inside of the bowl. I usually begin with 100 grit paper but today with the amount of scratching inside of the bowl sides, I began with 80 grit sandpaper on a disc. The bowl will require more sanding with 100 grit sandpaper and this will take time so I'll be working on this over the weekend.

As for the fingernail gouge, it's resting in the very rear of my tool drawer where it will stay for a while. 

And I'll be taking a nap.

VW

Hard Maple Salad Bowl, continued-hollowing out

 Hi Everyone,

 Well I had a very productive afternoon in the wood shop. Made a huge mess but removed most of the inside of the bowl. Here are some photos and comments:

Here's the beginning of the hollowing out process. I've been turning about 10 minutes and the depth is about 3/4" deep. If you look closely at the center you can see the screw holes from the faceplate:

 

I was using a fingernail gouge to work on the sides when all of a sudden I got two deep gouges  along the inside of the bowl. I haven't used a fingernail gouge in a long time so I'm out of practice with it. I have a large heavy bowl scraper and I removed the damage with that.

 

 I wanted to shape the inside of the bowl to match the outside shape so here you can see the upper sides are straight. Next I'm going to curve the bottom half of the bowl to match the curved surface of the outside-bottom of the bowl.

 

 And here is where it's at right now. The sides are looking good but there is still more wood on the bottom to be removed. As it's getting cold, I'll stop here for today.

 

Tomorrow I'll finish hollowing out the bowl and then refine the inside surfaces and if all goes well the turning part of the project will be finished.

 

What a mess! I have enough wood shavings to stuff a mattress!!

See you all tomorrow,
VW

 

Hard Maple Salad Bowl, continued: working on the foot

 Hi,

Well, the side of the bowl came out very well. I've sanded it to 320 grit and it's very smooth:

Ok, the next step is the foot of the bowl.

There are several ways to attach a bowl blank to a lathe-I have a face plate that I could screw on to the foot but that would leave screw holes that I would have to deal with later so that leaves a bowl chuck:

This is a large Nova chuck that I use for very wide turns. It's heavy and very solid-it's 7 pounds of steel-and it fits snugly and firmly on the bowl foot and that's what I'm going to go with:

This will give me a safe attachment and dampen some of the turning vibration that occurs with spinning large heavy blocks of wood.

It's beginning to get cold and windy so I'm going to stop for the day. I'll be back tomorrow to begin hollowing out the bowl,

 

VW

 

 

Hard Maple Salad Bowl, continued-shaping the side

 Hi Everyone,

Well I just came in from examining the bowl on the lathe and there are several considerations here:

First-the volume of the bowl. I've wanted to preserve as much of the volume of the blank as possible. Salad bowls are typically large and deep so a salad can be tossed easily without the contents spilling out. This bowl will be a little under 21/2" deep which is not very deep. But the width is just around 13" at this point so that should mitigate the shallowness of the bowl. 

Second-Salad bowls are also typically very eye catching. If you go to Pinterest and search for wooden salad bowls you'll see some really gorgeous bowls in a variety of woods with all sorts of detail turned into the sides. This bowl is solid maple and has very little in the way of visible grain pattern. But the color is a soft white which is unusual for a salad bowl so I think it needs a little detail to catch the eye. As I don't like adding details to bowls that stand out from the surface (and which can break off if dropped) I'm going to add a band to the upper part of the bowl that is depressed from the surface.

I'm going down to the wood shop a little later on to work on the side. When I'm done I'll do another posting about the foot.

See you later,

VW