Wedding Champagne Flutes #2: Planning done - preparation begins

Well it’s been almost four weeks since I started this project – my how time flies.
The champagne flutes all 60 of them arrived from Craft Supplies USA about 2 weeks ago and have since been shipped to Ken at Kallenshaan Woods for laser etching. Ken is shipping a couple of etched flutes back and as soon as they arrive I will post pictures in my next blog entry.

I selected Ron Trout (TreeBones on this site) to supply the turning lumber. We settled on walnut and a very nice tiger oak. About a week ago all 100 lbs. of timber arrived – I’m sure my postman will never speak to me again. Ron provided 4 pieces of oak 3.5×3.5×36 inches and several pieces of beautiful walnut.

While waiting for the supplies to arrive I began turning some prototypes of the bases in some maple stock I had on hand. There is a reason we do prototypes. First 3 attempts I cut right thru the stems trying to get the shape just right. Turns out the holes drilled in the end grain for the stem were drilling at an angle – oops. Got a better drill bit at Sears last weekend and the last prototype in the picture below – labeled #1 turned out to be much better and met with the approval of my quality inspector – LOML. Right now she prefers the base on #2 and the lines of prototype #1 so back to the lathe tonight for prototype #6.

Last night I cut one of the oak stock and one of the walnut timbers into blanks and rough turned 4 of the oak and one of the walnut blanks. Moisture content of the walnut is 9% but the oak was reading at 25%. So I going to rough turn the oak, put a tenon on the base end and put they in brown paper bags of a bit to dry them out before turning the the flute bases to size.

-- Mike, Maryland, www.thewoodenquill.com