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WoodworkingIn February of 2020, without at first intending to, I took up woodworking. The previous fall I had bought a new table saw to complete some of the re-shingling of the house after my old, trusty table saw failed. The new saw was of very poor quality and I had set myself the task of improving it as much as I could. This got out of hand and I found myself at Rockler buying woods that I had never before heard of. From there, things just continued to escalate, as you will see if you explore this section of my Wiki. The purpose of this page is to make it easy to see what new things I'm up to since your previous visit. What's New in the Woodworking Area (Most Recent First)March, 2025February, 2025Walnut bowls : Nice figure, about six inches diameter, to be given as gifts. (And then a maple bowl, because now I feel that I can do it justice. Then a macacauba bowl, I'm on a roll. Then pao rosa, I can't stop.)   February 12th : Blank - eBay Jekas_9202 #B252, "CROTCH EXTREMELY! CURLY Claro Walnut, 5.5 inch", $19.99 plus shipping. 13.5 cm (55/16") diameter, 4.5 cm (1¾") tall, 6.8 cm (2⅝") diameter foot, 59g (2.2 ounces). Strong growth rings crossed in places by tiger stripe figure with one small wild area. Some chatoyance. Two small flaws on outside only, filled with glue and sanding dust, barely visible. Finished with Danish oil, which is non-toxic but not certified food safe.
  February 14th : Blank - eBay Jekas_9202 #226, "WILD! GRAIN CURLY Claro Black Walnut 5.75 inch", $16.99 plus shipping. 14.3 cm (5⅝") diameter, 4.7 cm (1⅞") tall, 7.0 cm (2¾") diameter foot, 83g (3.0 ounces). Tiger stripe figure on one side only has good chatoyance. On the other side, three small knots add interest. One very small flaw, filled with glue and sanding dust, almost invisible. Finished with Danish oil, which is non-toxic but not certified food safe.
  February 15th : Blank - eBay Jekas_9202 #B237, "WILD! GRAIN CURLY Claro Walnut 6 inch", $16.99 plus shipping. 14.9 cm (5⅞") diameter, 4.6 cm (1⅞") tall, 6.9 cm (2¾") diameter foot, 112g (4.0 ounces). Lots of tiger stripe figure with strong chatoyance. Distinct growth rings around small knots. Three very small flaws, filled with glue and sanding dust, almost invisible. Finished with Danish oil, which is non-toxic but not certified food safe.
  February 16th : Blank - eBay Jekas_9202 #B85, "CURLY BEAUTIFUL!! Walnut 7 inch", $26.99 plus shipping. 17.4 cm (6⅞") diameter, 5.2 cm (just over 2") tall, 8.0 cm (3⅛") diameter foot, 130g (4.7 ounces). Good figure, tiger stripe and wild, with some chatoyance. Several small flaws in wild area, filled with glue and sanding dust, only visible on close inspection. One larger (1.0 cm) flaw similarly treated and more visible. Medium / dark color. probably claro walnut, but I can't be sure. Finished with Danish oil, which is non-toxic but not certified food safe.
  February 21st : Blank - eBay Jekas_9202 #B239. "VERY! WILD GRAIN BURL Claro Walnut 6.5 inch", $16.99 plus shipping. 16.2 cm (6⅜") diameter, 4.6 cm (113/16") tall, 7.6 cm (3") diameter foot, 104g (3.7 ounces). Strong figure of all sorts with lots of chatoyance. Many flaws (cracks, which are not uncommon with burl wood), mostly on the inside, filled with black epoxy, clearly visible. Finished with Danish oil, which is non-toxic but not certified food safe. In spite of (perhaps because of) the difficulty I had turning this bowl, I find myself unable to part from it and so it will not be a gift after all. I'm not proud of this decision, but at least I'm honest.
  February 23rd : Blank - eBay Jekas_9202 #231, "INSANE! WILD GRAIN CURLY Claro Walnut 6 inch", $18.99 plus shipping. 15.2 cm (6") diameter, 4.5 cm (1¾") tall, 7.2 cm (213/16") diameter foot, 91g (3.3 ounces). Distinct growth rings in one area and wild figure elsewhere with some chatoyance. Two large flaws (cracks) filled with black epoxy, visible on cursory inspection, one on the outside only. Cracks and wild figure suggest some burl wood. Finished with Danish oil, which is non-toxic but not certified food safe.
  February 24th : Blank - eBay honestguitars 355424427730, "7 inch Dia by 1¾ inch Bowl Blank, Flamed Soft Maple!", $20.00 shipped. 18.0 cm (71/16") diameter, 4.2 cm (1⅝") tall, 7.5 cm (215/16") diameter foot, 100g (3.6 ounces). Very strong flame figure with three-dimensional appearance and chatoyance in a wide band to one side of center. Growth rings are clearly visible intersecting. Some darker wood and a prominent bare patch. Two small knots clearly visible, one filled on the inside with glue and wood dust. Finished with Danish oil, which is non-toxic but not certified food safe.
   February 28th : Blank - I've lost track of where this 6" square by 3" thick macacauba blank came from. I hope I didn't pay too much because the middle of the tree ran right along one side. Today, after much deliberation, I sliced ¾" off one large square face and a similar thickness off two short faces to get a 5" square by 2" thick blank. There were still nasty knots, but I positioned them in the wood that would be removed. Knowing this to be a hard and heavy wood, I spent more time than usual shaping the blank on the table saw. Turning the bowl was not easy. I was unable to get an even half-way decent surface finish off the tool. I could not find a technique that would avoid tool marks and/or roughness of the end-grain. I had to go all the way back to 80 grit sanding. However, after persevering with this, I ended up with a very presentable bowl. 12.5 cm (4⅞") diameter, 4.7 cm (1⅞") tall, 6.9 cm (211/16") diameter foot, 114g (4.0 ounces). This bowl has beautiful growth rings with a wide variation of width and color. As the blank was quarter sawn, the growth rings pass across from one side to the other. There is flame figure at right angles to the growth rings with substantial chatoyance in the right light. Finished with Danish oil, which is non-toxic but not certified food safe.
  March 1st : Blank - I bought two small (4" square by 2" thick) pao rosa blanks from Rockler for $9.59 each back when I acquired my bowl gouge. This is a very hard and heavy wood. My first attempt to turn it resulted in shearing off the "worm" screw that came with my four-jaw chuck. I bought a faceplate with a stronger screw and finished the job, but all those 4 inch bowls looked rather stubby and this one had no redeeming features so I set it to one side. Today, I sliced about ¾" off the second blank to get something more in proportion. I turned it with the objective of getting as good a finish as possible before resorting to sanding (unlike the macacauba, yesterday). After some mistakes, I got what I think is a shear/scrape to work, but still had to spend a lot of time starting at 150 grit. However, after getting to 2,000 grit the surface was so lustrous that it looked as if a finish had already been applied. 9.5 cm (3¾") diameter, 3.2 cm (1¼") tall, 5.5 cm (2⅛") diameter foot, 55g (2.0 ounces). This bowl is "cute", because it's small but well-proportioned, but it's still just a practice bowl. There is no figure, although a tiny bit of chatoyance can be coaxed from the growth rings. Finished with Danish oil, which is non-toxic but not certified food safe.
January, 2025Router fails, replaced with Skil RT1323. Incredibly, I managed to mount it in my router table without too much effort. So, back in business. I like the slow motor start. The ability to adjust the cutter height from the top of the table turns out not to be useful as I can just reach in underneath. I have to do this anyway to operate the lock. Began work on 12 inch / 30 cm pepper mill by considering the general shape and making a first prototype from while cedar.    December, 2024Charcuterie Boards : To mill wood for the balcony railing, I needed a jointer and a planer, both of which I have done without so far. Trying to keep the cost down without too much compromise in quality, I bought a single machine that does both jobs. This is the Grizzly G0958. I particularly liked this because it has a helical cutter head. It can joint and plane stock up to 8 inches in width and plane up to 5 inches in thickness. The 8 inch width for planing could be viewed as a limitation. However, it's wide enough for a charcuterie board! So, using well-defined methods used to make cutting boards, I made three smaller boards to give as Christmas gifts. They are 7 inches wide and about 11½ inches long. The width allows half-inch rails to be fixed to either side, longer than the board, so as to collect planer snipe. The first board has figured cherry in the middle, with (moving outwards) padauk, zebra wood and curly maple as accent woods. The second board is bird's eye maple with walnut, padauk, and cherry as accents. The third board uses a piece of highly-figured maple I've been wondering what to do with. It had a division right through with live edge on both sides. I cleaned this out and filled it with tinted epoxy in the manner of a river table (but much, much smaller). The accents are wenge, cherry, zebra wood and walnut. September, 2024Replacing the balcony railing over the front door.   May 2024Pepper Mills, Alexa. March 2024Wine bottle stopper and coaster sets. February 2024Wine bottle stoppers. January 2024Bowl turning. Spring / Summer 2023A friend offers to give me the "midi" lathe that he inherited from his father (presumably, the one he already has is better). I accept. So, now I have a real lathe, not a DIY micro-lathe that is really a drill press. To make it usable, I have to construct a stand for it and buy a bunch of accessories on eBay (drive center, live center, faceplate, drill chuck, etc.). Also on eBay I find a couple of tools that will come in useful - first a small parting tool and then something I mistake for a rouging gouge, but turns out to be something else, but I'll use it as a rouging gouge anyway. Everything works, I make some test pieces and buy some nice blanks, but it doesn't really take off. Yet.   February 12, 2021A fairly obvious turning project that would have some utility, but also provide lots of opportunity for a decorative design, is a bud vase. The difficulty of finding suitable glass tubes held me up for a while. Without a waterproof insert, the vase would be "fake" like the pepper grinders. I can't turn anything on my lathe that's longer than five or maybe six inches, so I need a short tube. But, I don't want it to be very narrow. I found some that are nominally 4¾" long that fit into a ¾" hole and have an inside diameter of a little under 5/8". I looked for pictures of vases on the Web and copied the design that I liked most (without regard to complexity). I picked out some woods that should be attractive but that I can easily spare, in case things don't work out. It took several days to cut and glue up the pieces, including figuring this all out, and then a couple of hours to turn the vase. The result is shown in the photograph at right. I think this trial worked well enough that I will make a few more of this design with woods chosen for better appearance. I had only one problem with the turning, which was the narrow rim. You can see in the SketchUp model, at the far right, that it is supposed to be broader. The tool would catch and gouge into the wood and I had to keep removing material to get rid of the mark before I could try again.
   Early February, 2021Still at the lathe, my attempts to learn how to use a skew chisel didn't pan out. However, I figured out how to sharpen and hone my odd-ball, multi-purpose "skewchigouge" and set about seeing what I could do with that. Quite a lot, it seems, although I've not thought up anything useful and the results have all been "practice pieces". Having started with easy-working woods such as maple and cherry, I plucked up the courage to try some challenging exotic woods that I bought and now have a selection of screwdriver handles in species such as Marblewood and Pau Rosa. Plus some things that look like pepper grinders, but aren't. And a useless cabriole table leg.
 January 10, 2021A confluence of factors caused me to take another look at my home-made wood lathe. I discovered that I can actually make useful and attractive items, such as the ratcheting screwdriver shown. The handle is cherry finished with Danish oil. Or was it danished with Finnish oil? (I get the Nordic countries mixed up.) In preparation to trying a more challenging material, I made a skew chisel out of an old file and set about learning how to use it from YouTube videos and by practicing on scrap wood.
  December 25, 2020Although I completed it some time ago, I've kept this puzzle a bit of a secret in case the couple I planned to give it to saw it here. On Christmas day, I gave the chain to one and the box to the other without stating that the chain could be placed inside the box. Within a few hours they had the chain in the box, but then forgot how they did it and so will have the fun all over again! I actually made several chains and boxes to see what combinations of woods looked good together and then, somehow, forgot to photograph them all. The photographs show a chain of curly maple and a bocote box and a chain with links of alternately claro walnut and curly maple and a Bolivian rosewood (pau ferro) box. The gift was an African padauk chain and a box of curly maple with a wide leopardwood band around it bordered by a narrow strip of padauk. I also made another bocote box and a chain with links of alternately curly maple and claro walnut.
        December 23, 2020These small boxes take a bit longer to complete than the slab-lid boxes. I tried out some minor variations of the original "lift-lid" design, while keeping the taller, undecorated side surfaces to show off wrap-around grain patterns. From left to right, the first two boxes are of the original design where the top part of the box separates from the bottom. The next three have a simpler lid that drops into a rabbet around the top inside of the carcase. This eliminates the cut line between top and bottom and improves the display of the wood pattern. The rightmost three boxes also use this design, but have a handle made from dowel instead of the thumb depression and "pinch-strip".
    December 15, 2020Time is running out to finish Christmas gifts for family and friends. I'm trying to "mass" produce them, while putting thought into the selection of wood species so that each piece is distinctive. Today I completed four new slab lid boxes. These start quickly but then take a long time to get the corner splines in, but I really like the appearance of three splines at each corner, especially the top one that is cut back by the bevel around the sides of the box. One box is purpleheart with maple splines and a quilted maple lid. Another is osage orange with African padauk splines and lid. The next is leopardwood with maple splines and a bookmatched maple burl lid. The last is bird's eye maple with macacauba splines and lid.    December 10, 2020When I discovered that on eBay you can buy incredibly interesting wood and see actual photographs before you choose, I went a bit crazy. I ended up with some lovely bookmatched walnut that I turned into keepsake boxes, but I also bought some maple burl simply because it looked so beautiful. I had no idea what I would ultimately do with this, but I glued up the pieces into bookmatched pairs just so that I could admire them. I toyed with the idea of simply hanging them on the wall like a picture. Eventually, I decided to turn them into wall clocks. For reasons that I won't go into here, I also make a wall clock with a face of cherry veneer over poplar with a narrow band of black walnut around the edge.  December 7, 2020This project had been in the works for a long time. The idea came from cut-offs from other projects that looked like tiny cutting boards. When I hit upon the idea of earrings, I knew at once who I would give them to. Then I had to find the tiny silver chef's knife and cleaver, buy the French hooks and jump rings and figure out how to put it all together. The last problem that I solved was drilling the tiny holes in the wood. For the full description, click here.   July 18 to 25, 2020After a hiatus, during which I regressed to mere carpentry and worked on re-shingling the house, I returned briefly to woodworking. To be honest, I was hiding in the cool basement from the hot and humid July weather. I had bought some highly figured claro walnut as a pair of bookmatched pieces and I decided to make from it a box with a four-corner wrap-around grain pattern.  May 22, 2020Using bird's eye maple from the same board as the lids of the second and third keepsake boxes, I made coasters with the usual urethane finish. Comparing them to the box lids, I concluded that the oil finish imparts an amber tone to a wood as pale as maple and does not bring out the figure quite as well as urethane. I still greatly prefer the feel of wood finished with oil; there isn't the impression of a layer of plastic between you and the wood.   May 12, 2020After the success of my first keepsake box, I made two more of the same design, but with variations in the lid decoration. I avoided mistakes made in the first box, but, in trying to work  May 6, 2020I branched out from Coasters to Small Boxes. I began with a curly maple and purpleheart "slab lid" keepsake box and wrote up the "recipe" to make it.
 April 27 to 30, 2020I designed and made a set of four coasters with a holder for a friend who is a RISD alumna. She offered the suggestion that I make a set of coasters all using the same wood species but with differences in the design. A set should be at least four. Before I started, I drew the coasters and holder in SketchUp with the aim of visualizing their appearance before committing the wood and labor to actually making them. This worked out very well.    February to April, 2020During this period, I created "Opus One" (a walnut, cherry and curly maple toilet roll holder spindle), a toothbrush holder and a platform to display my wife's collection of Laura Baring-Gould bronze pears. Then, I got into a bit of a rut making coasters, but I did get to try out a lot of different wood species. |