These two hollow forms are the result of my exploring the use of grain orientation. Both forms come from the same tree. In fact they come from the same piece of wood, adjacent to each other. Apart from having a difference in profile, they differ only in the orientation of the grain whilst turned. The first form was turned with the bottom of the form facing the pith of the tree and the top of the wood facing the bark. This resulted in the top of the form being sapwood and the grain lines being horizontal, flowing around the form. The second form was turned with one side facing the pith and the opposite side facing the bark, and with the axis (top to bottom) perpendicular to the log. This resulted in the sapwood being on one side of the form, and vertical grain lines on two sides and circular grain lines on the two other sides.

Wood: Red Ironbark Eucalyptus
Finish: Pre-cat lacquer
Crack: Filled with CA glue and coffee grinds

It is that time again; time to make Christmas gifts for the kids. These are made from a kit that features a bering on the axle. It takes a little practice, but the bering make it much easier to to tricks.

In addition to getting Christmas gifts out of the way, I found this to be a great skill building exercise for several reasons. It may seem like it would get a little boring making ten of the same thing, but consider:

- A yoyo requires you to make two identical parts

- Not only will you have to make two identical parts, but also, you will have to turn one to the left and one to the right.

- Making the same cuts over and over builds muscle memory. I find this key to developing consistent tool control

- Making the same item in different wood species lets you compare the nuances of how different woods behave.

Photo #2 Purpleheart / Morado
Photo #3 Zebrawood / Quartersawn White Oak
Photo #4 Redheart / Paduk
Photo #5 Callery Pear / Leopardwood
Photo #6 Jatoba / Curly Maple

Just a side note, There is one very important last step when making these, a crucial step that was omitted from the instructions: Hide them from the grown-ups till Christmas! LOL

Merry Christmas!

Every summer, the local woodworking club that I belong to, has a “picnic challenge”. This year, each participant was to make something out of three pieces of wood provided by the club president. Each set of wood was as close to identical as possible. The three pieces of wood were: a wedge of Curly Maple, about 8” x 10” on the outside of the wedge; a 4” x 4”, 3/4” thick piece of Jatoba (Brazilian Cherry); and a piece of Wenge’ about the size of a pen blank. The rules were that we had to use at least some of each wood, and that no other woods could be used.

My original plan was to make the bowl section out of the Maple, leaving some of the natural ripple, caused by the curly figure, on the outside of the log on the rim; use the Jatoba for the rim, and the Wenge’ for the finial. However, as I hollowed out the bowl, it was eventually clear that the natural rim idea was not going to pan out. To make thing worse, the opening at the rim was now too large for the piece of Jatoba that I wanted to use as rim

To solve the lid problem, I sliced up the Wenge’ to make segments, to form a segmented ring to make the rim smaller. At this point, I could use the Jatoba again to make the rim, but this left me with no Wenge’ for the finial. I did have some leftover Maple, but I thought that a Maple finial would not look nice.

I checked the rules, and found that coloring the wood was legal, so I decided to use the Maple for the finial and ebonize it. For an added touch, I decided to make a multi-axis final, which ended up kind of resembling the stem on an apple.

So, at this point, just when I am starting to feel that I am in the clear, just needing to get a couple of coats of lacquer on this piece, I completely botch the lacquer on the inside of the bowl. After trying to re-sand the inside, it was clear that I was not going to be able to easily remove my botchery entirely. Once again, ebonizing came to my rescue. I could not fix it, so I hid it.

Picnic Challenge? A challenge it was, but a picnic it was not.

Crotch wood, that is logs where a branch or trunk diverge into two branches, contains a chunk of highly figured wood known as “feather figure”, so named because it often resembles a feather. On small crotch logs, there is little feather figure to be had, and turning such chunks of wood in the usual ways (either as a conventional bowl or a typical natural edge bowl) ends up cutting away most or all of what little feather figure there is.

I have found two ways to retain and show off what little feather figure there is in a small crotch: One is to make a winged bowl, thereby retaining at least some of the feather figure on the wing. The other is to make a natural edge bowl with a flat or relatively flat bottom. Since the feather figure is in the center of the crotch, the figure will show up on the bottom of a natural edge bowl. As a bonus, a natural edge bowl made from a crotch will have three peaks and valleys along the rim, as opposed to the usual two.

Photo #1

This is a crotch-winged bowl made from some heavily spalted Apple. The spalting has resulted in some spectacular grain pattern.

Photo #2

A closeup of the feather figure. One of the tradeoffs when making a winged bowl from a crotch is between the size of the bowl section and the amount of feather figure retained. A larger bowl section will cut away some of the feather figure, and a smaller bowl section will retain more feather figure. In this case, the bowl section was maximize, and some of the feather figure was cut away.

Photo #3

Another crotch-winged bowl, this one made from Albizia

Photo #4

A closeup of the feather figure. Since the bowl section is less than maximized, more of the feather figure is retained.

Photo #5

A natural edge bowl made from the other half of the log that the bowl in Photos #3 is from. The feather figure seems to radiate out from the center more than other species.

Photo #6

A natural edge bowl made from a crotch of Cherry. There was very little feather figure in this piece, such that the outside/bottom of the bowl has more figure that the bottom inside.

Lately, I have been unable to pull myself away from the lathe. And by “lately” I mean for the last year or so. At the same time, I have been itching to make some furniture. So I though that perhaps I could make some furniture on the lathe.

I set out to survey what kinds of furniture is being either partly or completely made on the lathe. For sure, I found some spectacular craftsmanship in the area of turned furniture, but there was something missing. Most of the lathe furniture was quite classical and traditional in style, with lots of beads, coves, and ogees. Not that there is anything wrong with that style of furniture, it is just not my style and taste. My proclivity is toward the contemporary usually with just a dash of Asian influence. I found few examples to fit that bill.

At this point I was thinking that, with all the wonderful and creative turning techniques available, techniques that I frequently see hobbyist turners and artistic turners use, there has to be some turning techniques with which I can create a contemporary piece of furniture.

This stool is the results of my exploration. All the parts for this stool were turned on the lathe!

The legs were made on multiple axes. The first axis was used simply to make a 2” cylinder. For the second axis, I shifted both the headstock and tailstock centers the same distance, but in opposite directions. Once spinning again, the blank makes a butterfly shaped shadow, with the shadow disappearing at the middle of the blank. I completely cut away the shadow on one half to form the top half of the leg, and turned a bead on the bottom of the other half to form the tippy-toe foot. The results are an inverted tapered leg that has the illusion of being slightly curved.

The stretchers were made similar to the legs, but using four different axes. The first, again, was used to form the initial cylinder. The second and third axes were used to form the tapers on either side, just like the top of the legs. The final axis was on the two offset centers, and is parallel to the first axis. This final axis was used to form the tenons so that the stretchers are moved outward.

The grand finale is the seat. The bottom of the seat was formed with essentially the same technique that is used to make winged bowls. The seat was mounted with the centers at the centers of the seat, top and bottom. The bottom was made with a straight cut, but at an angle. The results in the curved shape on the bottom of the seat. How cool is that? turing a curve with a straight cut? (For you math geeks, think about a plane intersecting a cone).
The top of the seat was formed with a curved cut, so that the thickness of the seat varies. It is essentially a “square” bowl.

This stool has opened up a floodgate of ideas for making furniture either partly or completely on the lathe. There may even be a collaborative effort being born. (shhhh!)

P.S. I was hoping to post this stool last Friday, before the AAW Symposium, but time did not allow. I did, however, have this stool in the Instant Gallery at the Symposium.

Woods: Wenge’, Honduran Mahogany
Finish: pre-cat lacquer (ML Campbells)

Last year (in March 2011) I traveled to Todd Clippinger's shop to team up with Todd to make one of his Shaker Benches to be donated to the annual COR Enterprises charity auction.

This year, I cannot travel to Billings, so I decided to make something here in my San Jose (California) shop and send it to the auction in Billings.

I chose this piece because its form reminds me of the rustic, artisan simplicity of Billings, but the choice of Eucalyptus (although not native) is distinctly Californian.

Although not so much fun to turn, Eucalyptus has a distinctive color, texture, and beauty that makes it worth the hassle. It is subject to all the usual figuring (curly, crotch, etc.) but also has certain figure that I have only encountered in Eucalyptus. (I believe some of this figure to be remnants of long shed juvenile branches from when the tree was small.)

The style of the bowl is one of the (two) ways that I have figured out, to take advantage of the small amount of feather figure in relatively small pieces of crotch. The technique I used to make the wings, I learned from watching Stuart Batty make one of his “square bowls”. And just like Stuart’s bowls, the slightly curved edges on the wings are made wit a straight cut:

The wings have to be done to completion a little at a time; there is no going back:

Using the tool rest as a reference to cut straight:

Style: Crotch-Winged Bowl
Wood: Silver Dollar Eucalyptus (a.k.a Redbox Gum)
Finish: Boiled Linseed Oil + Beall Buff

These winged bowls are a joy to make and tests one’s tool control to the extreme. I also find them great for those times when I have a small diameter log in a valuable species, because, although the bowl section is no larger than if I made a conventional bowl, the overall size of a winged bowl is much larger.

Bowl #1, made from Plum, is my favorite, because although the natural edge is curved, the wings are made with a straight cut. I call this style a “Hyperbola Winged Bowl” (Mathematicians, think of a plane intersecting a cone = Hyperbola)

Bowl #2, made of California Alder, is all wing. I call this style a “Banana Split Bowl” because it is similar is shape to the bowls commonly used to make banana splits.

Bowl #3, made from Plum, is the sister blank from bowl #1. This bowl has a straight natural edge and balances on its bottom.

Bowl#4, made from Spalted Birch, is also straight and balanced. I would have liked the rim thinner, but the spalting made the wood a little punky.

Bowl #5, made from Black Walnut, is offset like bowl #1, but one wing extends to a point that it holds the bowl uprght.

Photo #6 is an action shot of roughing out bowl #1 or #3 ( I cannot remember which.)

Merry Christmas fellow LumberJocks!

I had a lot of fun making these ornaments. More precisely, I had a lot of fun figuring out how to make these ornaments. If you are interested in seeing how I went about it, you can check out the video below.

I did expect the thin spindle to be challenging, and it was—highly recommended if you want to push your tool control to the limit—but there were many other unexpected challenges too. Take a look:

It may sound corny, but this winged bowl made from Callery Pear, with sapwood on one side and heartwood on the other, reminds me of everything about marriage: Two parts (the sapwood and the heartwood) are united; The two sides will be more alike over time (as the sapwood darkens); the two parts are are not 50/50 (yeah, thats a loaded one); It has its ups and downs (the wavy wings.); it has integrity in spite of a few fractures (cracks in the bowl section.). Perhaps it would make a nice wedding gift.

These are the first and fifth vases in my series of six that I made to get the hang of hollowing with my new tool. The wood used for these two vases came from a some beautiful stock of Callery Pear that I have from locally felled trees. Callery Pear is quite beautiful (in my not so humble opinion). I am lucky that such beautiful wood is readily available to me, since it is a popular ornamental for its beautiful blossoms, but it does not live a really long time, often blowing over in storms. Pear also gets a variety of distinctive forms of spalting.

The smaller vase is the first vase I made with the new hollowing system, and as such, least uses the form to exploit the features of the wood. It is also the first time I used powdered brass, as an alternative to my usual black stone powder, to fill cracks. I am pleased with the brass fill.

The larger vase perhaps is the best of the set of six vases, when it comes to using the form to exploit the features of the wood. This piece of wood I had thought to be hopeless, and I was tempted to relegate it to the firewood pile on several occasions. The large corner of the bark ended up forming the neat natrual edge on the side of the rim, which fades into a brass filled crack. That is my favorite feature. For sure this was a difficult piece of wood to turn, with the deep cracks; but I think it was worth the effort.

These are the third and fourth vases in my series of six that I made to get the hang of hollowing with my new tool. The wood used for these two vases came from a neighbor’s tree that was cut down, perhaps because it was sick (which would explain the spalting.) (This is the same stock of wood that was used to make the Spalted Birch Goblet).

I was trying to push the tool on these two pieces, in terms of how deep and narrow I could make a vase. Also, in keeping with the concept of using the shape of a vase to exploit the particular features of the wood, I made these vases curvy so that the spalting fades in and out. Otherwise the spalting may have ended up looking like just a black streak from top to bottom.

I have been wanting to try my hand at some serious hollowing, so I broke down—broke open my piggy bank, that is—and bought one of those Jamieson tools. I made a series of six vases, in paris of three different species. These are the two made of Claro Walnut.

This Claro Walnut was from a local tree that I acquired, from a friend who had taken it down for safety reasons. (Local! How lucky I am to live in an exclusive area where Claro Walnut grows.)

The smaller vase is the second in the series of six vases, and the larger is the last of the series.

One thing I did learn while making vases for the first time is that the variety of shapes for a vase is somewhat limited, but when the shape of the vase is used to exploit the particular features of the piece of wood, the possibilities are much greater. In the case of these two pieces, for instance, although I am still pleased with the smaller vase, I find that the taller vase, being more slender and having the flat shoulder, lends itself to the variegations in the long grain of the Claro Walnut.

This display cabinet was custom build for a friend of ours, to display an heirloom Dorothy doll, from the Wizard of Oz.

If you are interested in the details of the design of this cabinet, you can check out my shop update that covers the design of ot here

If you are interested in how I made the custom cove moulding on this cabinet, I made a Straightedge video on precisely that topic. You can find the video here

In this project, I made heavy use of my grooving planes. I used them to make the dados that accept the glass frames, to make the rabbets on the back that accept the back panel, and to make the spline joints that join the cove moulding to the bases. You can find out more about my grooving planes here.

I also have this project posted at my website that I use for clients, here.

While I was in Montana, building the Shaker Style Bench with Todd Clippinger, I used a small wooden plane that someone made for Todd to clean up the dovetails on the drawers/boxes. This plane felt just like my general purpose plane, the first plane I ever made, only its smaller size made it more comfortable for boxes. More recently, after finishing up the Asian Cabinet, I decided to spend some time practicing making dovetail boxes/drawers. My restored Stanley knuckle joint cap block planes did a great job performing the same task, but I find after cleaning up a few joints, even the knuckle joint cap style of block planes can get uncomfortable on the driving hand. During the box making practice, I also noticed several other opportunities for planes aimed specifically at box/drawer making. This got me to thinking that, perhaps, there is an oppertunity here to make a few planes aimed specifically at box making.

This is the first in that new series of hand planes aimed at making box/drawer making easier. This plane is aimed primarily at squaring/cleaning up edges on drawer stock, and cleaning up joints, like the pins and tails of a dovetail joint. The shape may look a little odd, but there is a purpose for its shape. Here is the features and problems I was out to solve with this plane:

- The back/butt of this plane is quite wide for a plane of this size. I find this extra girth better for control and more comfortable, especially after cleaning up a dozen or so joints.
- The sole is extra wide in the back 2/3’s of the plane, making it easy to use with what I have been calling a “reference block”. I use this reference block when planing the edge of drawer stock to keep the edge square. (You can see me using a reference block in the video.)
- I often use figured stock, like curly maple, for drawer stock, which is prone to tear-out. I increased the pitch of the iron to 50 degrees (York Pitch) as opposed to 45 degrees (Standard Pitch). I am finding that this extra 5 degrees can make a big difference when planing figured wood.
- The front of the plane is quite narrow, almost the same width as the iron. I find this very comfortable for the way I use this plane. If I am using a reference block, this narrowness makes it easy to control the plane and hold the reference block with my lead hand at the same time.
- The very nose of the plane turns up, giving the thumb of my lead hand a place to push or pin the plane. This has a lot to do with the technique I use for trimming the end-grain of, for example, dovetails while cleaning up a joint. Instead of trying to shove a plane through a cut of tough end-grain, I pin the front of the plane and swing the tail of the plane around, causing more of a slicing action on the end grain. This technique is much easier with a place to offer some leverage to my thumb.

There are two other things I did differently, that do not have to with box making.

Having restored several metal, Stanley hand planes, and from copious reading about hand planes, I was under the impression that a chip breaker was an absolute must for a plane to perform. Well I noticed a few Lumberjocks, one in particular, Philip Edwards was not using chip breakers. I asked Phil about it (it was a long time ago) and he indicated that his planes were working fine without one. I gave it a try, and, low and behold, I don’t need no stinking chip breaker!

The iron in this plane is neither A2 nor O1 tools steel, but rather HSS steel. The funny thing that I have been finding with HSS steel is that I can never get it to be as sharp as O1 or A2 blades, but they seem to perform well nonetheless. With O1 (high carbon steel) I can easily get an edge that will effortlessly shave the hairs on my forearm, but with HSS steel, it is difficult to get past the point where it is just beginning to shave hair. However, when I use the HSS blade at that rate, the resulting surface is every bit as smooth. I am no expert on tool steel, and I would sure like to hear from someone who knows more about metallurgy than me, who could shed some light on this phenomenon.

Last year, on a whim, I submitted a few my pieces to Fine Woodworking Magazine for a new feature with Hank Gilpin. My Jewelry Armoire appeared on page 64 issue of FWW #214 (October 2010), where my designed was constructively ripped to shreds, sort of.

My initial reaction was to fix the things on the Jewelry Armoire , but after some contemplation, and suggestions from fellow woodworkers (including several LumberJocks) I decided to design and create a new piece from scratch: the “Asian Cabinet”

This piece is the results.

If you reread Hank’s critique, you can see several of his suggestions implemented in this piece, although perhaps not in exactly the same way. First thing is that the rails on the stand have a spit apron, which make them play better with the trim on the cabinet. Second is that the legs and the vertical trim form a single line, but at the same time have a break between the cabinet and the stand in order to make it look like it is floating. Keeping it in line keeps the piece from looking top heavy as well. Third is the subtle curve of the leg. (A curve does not need to be extreme to be elegant.) Forth is the handles: Hank had suggested making the Katakana lettering on the Jewelry Armoire also function as the handles. This is that idea, except that I made the handles mimic traditional Chinese lacing.

This Cabinet is also much smaller and much more slender looking. The sides, back, top, and bottom are made from exactly half a sheet of (Walnut) plywood, whereas the Jewelry Armoire is made from exactly one sheet of (Lyptus) plywood.

Other improvements:

- With frameless doors, the cabinet is prone to racking. I widened the top and bottom rails of the cabinet to ameliorate the racking. Being a smaller cabinet also helps.

- I used Brusso brass knife hinges, and made custom door stops using embedded rare earth magnets and lignum vitae.

- Finished with precat lacquer.

I have a lot of photos of the making of this cabinet, with which I hope to make a video like I did for the Jewelry Armoire. (stay tuned).

Although I much prefer working on fine furniture, when you have the tools, have the skills, and own a home, you occasionally get pulled into home improvement projects. Add to that a wife than knows you have the tools, have the skills and you often get pulled into home improvement projects. LOL video and more...

I did not know what to call this turning, but it kept reminding me of the shape of a banana split. So, I am calling it a Banana Split Bowl.

When I have a piece of valuable wood in log form, I do not want to waste any bit of it. As such, I find it often pushes me to be more creative in how I can use it. This time around, it was a trunk of a small Japanese Maple tree that had been dead for some time and was thoroughly spalted. After using most of the trunk for a goblet, I came up with an idea on how I could use that bit of leftover trunk that flares into the roots. The idea was to turn it upside down, make a bowl with a base, leaving a natural edge on both the rim of the bowl and on the base. I would really like to show you that bowl, but unfortunately, I am in the process of gluing it back together. Doh!

The good news is that I realized that this same technique could be used on a crotch, or any other irregularly shaped logs that have a large perimeter disparity over a short span. This one is made from some Callery Pear. I do not know if the darker, brown color is technically spalting, but it is some sort of incipient rot. The other nice thing about using a crotch is that, for small crotches, the highly figured wood between the two branches is usually to little to be useful. On this kind of bowl, however, that highly figured section ends up in the stem and in the center of the bowl.

As the shape goes, I think I can improve on the shape of the base, but for my first attempt at this kind of bowl, I cannot complain.

The log whence this bowl came:

“Spalted Japanese Maple Goblet” is such big name for such a small turing.

I cannot get over how beautiful wood can be. This goblet was made from the trunk of a small Japanese Maple tree that died. I normally do not bother with such small pieces, as the trunk was only about 4” in diameter and about 20” long, but knowing that it is Maple and that it was dead for some time, I knew that there was a high probability that it was spalted. Sure enough.

This goblet is actually the results of my third attempt. I blew through the cup on the first two attempts, as I mention in my Shop Journal.

Since I released my video on how to use locally felled trees for turning, I have been unable to pull myself away from the lathe. Feeling that I had reached a new level of tool control, I decide to give one of those really thin-walled goblets a try. So out to the wood pile I went to find a piece of “scrap” branch wood for some practice.

Scrap, not!

This is one of the greatest joys in using locally felled trees: You never know when you will strike gold in an undesirable hunk of “scrap” wood.

I made these last September, at the end of my shop-made hand tools binge. (I am sure I will have more such binges.) I have not had a chance to post them since I was busy putting my website together. I am experimenting with showing off projects with video. Let me know what you think (both about the scraper planes themselves and the use of video).

Click here to read my write-up and see the video.

Click here to go directly to the video

I am also working on a demo video on using these planes. Perhaps next week.