Rock, the falling squirrel

I put this in my woodturning blog because as I was just starting to do my fake attempt to workout at running on the treadmill and the radio was blaring Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, to hear over the treadmill when the phone rang and it was a free wood call that I was expecting but it was to cancel for today.  I had to get out of the room to hear the call so I went out back with the phone.  As I was walking and talking I looked down next to spot where the dog likes to dig and found what looked like a squirrel that had fallen from a great height and was half embedded.  All that you could see was a big bushy tail and back legs!  I finished the conversation looking for evidence of what had happened.  Did the dog get it?  Did it take a suicide drop from the garage roof? Was it Rocky the Flying Squirrel with engine failure?  Was it just playing Ostrich?
My dog Yankee, from my childhood, was an outside dog and one day had dead mouse and we wondered how that happened.  Was the mouse full of poison, was it sick or did the dog just happen upon a lucky situation?  I don't see any signs my dog had anything to do with it and he does not want to go back out and wonder where it is.

Turns out Rock was missing the other half of its body.  No blood, no grossness, no signs of struggle, no evidence throughout the yard, no crime scene tape.  I have no idea.  I got a trash bag and scooped him up and put him in the trash can but questions still linger in my mind.  I am guessing that a raptor was eating breakfast, went to take it to another place and dropped it.  That seems to explain it all and avoid the long drawn out interrogation of the neighbors and all the hard feelings it brings, so we will leave it at that.

RIP Rock

free wood

I decided to cut up some wood today and make some sawdust, hope something comes out of it...  I have some Apricot (I think) wood from a neighbor that had a tree break in the storms this summer.   I looked at the lay of the wood and started to chainsaw it up and the saw made the a bad, bad noise and started jumping.  I stopped a looked down the cut and saw the shiny metal looking back.

Oh no....  The chain is still cutting but will need to be looked @ later so I cut from the other end and found another metal shiny.  I pulled out the wedges and sledge and split it the rest of the way.  Turns out they have three bars and some waxy glue like stuff in there to keep the crotch from splitting. I don't know how deep they are or how I am going to get them out or  what wood is left but I will try and find out..

This is quite interesting timing... last weekend I was demoing at the Woodturning Festival @ the Woodworker's Club, and I heard the turner next to me saying that metal in the wood is the danger of free wood.   How right he is! 

I have been spending many of my turning hours working on bottle stoppers.  Saturday our club had a woodturning demo day @ The Woodworkers Club in Rockville where we do our meetings.  It went very well, we had 2 lathes outside and 4 inside making all kinds of chips.  My task was to share a lathe with a young turner who was making pens (he also works @ the Woodworkers Club) and make bottlestoppers.  I knew about this for a long time and have been preparing, as much as I ever prepare.  I made a bunch of stoppers, bought a variety of bases and some extra Ruth Niles stoppers to show options and my favorite.    We had a pretty good turnout and talked to all kinds of people.  I had a lot of Osage orange (several questioned if it was mulberry but I purchased it as Osage and I am sticking with it.  

I made 6 stoppers while there and had 30+ examples to show people.  

Included in those examples are were these that I made from the Vicki Jordan maple.  I am hoping to get good shots and get them out the door!  Note the one on the end, I tried multi-axis bottle stopper for the first time and like it as a first try.  I was doing variations on a theme and I like the variety.  I step up to the lathe and take what it gives me.  I have been very happy with it.

Exhibitions: A Revolution in Wood: The Bresler Collection / American Art

I have missed the opening events but hope to make it down for some of this show. MCW is one of the groups that is doing some turning demos and although I would like to do some turning I am not sure I am the best to do that. We had slots for Saturdays and Tuesdays. I could not do Tuesdays and the Saturdays had better turner/ambassadors than I. I hope to go down when they are there and help out if I can. I need to worry about this weekend now.

Exhibitions: A Revolution in Wood: The Bresler Collection / American Art

Vicki's bowl page 4

I have not posted much here about my bowl, but pretty boring.  I put tung oil on it and it didn't seem to cure for a long time.  I then put a couple of coats of salad bowl finish on it and then today used the Beall buffing/polishing system on it and think I am done.  I need to take some very good pictures of it and will take it to the meeting this week and see if i can get some shots there as well.

 I spent Saturday @ Poolesville day.  The day started with a parade that was very small town.  These are the parades that I am most familiar with.   My friend Pam is a potter and is making a nice little business of it.  She has her wares in several venues, has done large pottery shows with multiple potters under one roof, but she is just starting this craft booth thing and only the second time with the booth.   She has been a gently pushing me to get my stuff out and start selling.   She said that I could put stuff out with her on Saturday and I took her up on it.  She made some nice sales, not a great day but did ok.  I on the other had got one bottle stopper sale.   It was the first sale to a non-friend that I have had.  I got to see my kids playing drums on the "band wagon" in the parade, had a sale, sat around with friends in the shade.  It was a great, hot, fall day.

ebony challenge part 2

Along with the first piece there was a second piece.  At the thickest part it was about 3/4 inches thick.   Since piece one is so plain and very black, I think it needs to have some color.  I ordered some faux ivory but it is taking probably 2 weeks to be delivered.  I made a couple of ash balls to see how they look and what size I needed to make for the final.  

While waiting for the ivory, I decided to make some out of the ebony and the sap wood.  I didn't have jaws to fit the small piece of ebony that I cut out.  I drilled a hole in a scrap piece of wood and cut some slices in it so that it could grip it better...didn't work as well as I had hoped but CA glue worked fine

ebony challenge

At my last MCW meeting we were given a bag with ebony piece(s) in it. I am not very familiar with, nor do I have the shop to do it,  taking pieces apart and re-assembling them.  I have been seeing pieces and some "how to" on WoodCentral with multiple scopes on a plane.  I thought I would try this..  here is what I had to start with....

 

I wanted to keep the surface plane parallel like it will sit.  I tried using expanding foam.  It may not have been the best but seemed to work well enough.  I put tape around the piece of wood to keep the foam off of it.

I used the tail stock to center the piece on the spot I plan to turn.

I made some errors on this first one but sanded it out.. Made it a little flat bowl shape but not too bad...

Lined up for the center cut.

And the third..

Added a few more and this is the end of day 1...will there be more?  I don't know yet..

maple day 2

I got some time to turn the blanks today.  First I made them round and put a tenon on them...

This created a large amount of  shavings..

My first coring went well with the smallest.  The next smallest with the large tenon was the one with the most ambrosia, and I am pretty sure I went too deep.

Then when I tried to do the largest one, it came flying off, (not that some of the smaller ones didn't) but it grazed my elbow and I chose to stop, get a grip...maybe tomorrow...

today in the driveway

  

BEFORE

Spent 2 hours turning these two logs into turning blanks.  would have liked to spend another 2 hours turning them round but duty calls and have to take my family to a zip line @ national harbor.  Maybe tomorrow!

AFTER

Vicki's Bowl page 3

8/17/2010  Today was the day I decided to finish the base.  I first refined some of the burned lines.  I tried to make some of them more consistent all the way down the line, some to fix my less the perfect lines.  This went pretty well.  Then I took it to the lathe.....  I gave it a light sanding.  I found a block and trued it up for a jam chuck. 

I had purchased woodturning double sided tape recently.  I put several tape strips on it, pushed it up with the tailstock and started taking off the tenon.   Now this is where life gets interesting...

I turned down the base tenon and started cleaning up the base.  I straightened out the curve to the base and brought it in a little.  I decided to separate the base and the bowl with a grove.  When trying to take the tenon down  a little further, I had a catch.......  What you can't see in the out of focus shot is a chunk out of the tenon.  By the look of the ripped fibers in the tenon, I thought I might have a funnel.  What I was trying to show in the out of focus shot is the scratch that I was soaking in water to try and pull out the fibers.  Fortunately that seems to be the extent of the damage.  The tape was all in a ball in the bowl.  I have some old double sided foam tape that is used to put light signs up at offices.  I put some of that on and realigned with the hole.  This tape worked very well and I cleared the tenon, sanded and all is well.   I am sorry that I don't have good pictures of the damage but I have found that raised blood pressure and photography do not coexist.

8/26/2010
I had been pretty nervous about posting these, because I am way out of my comfort zone.  Today for some reason I have decided to publish... not sure why... maybe getting out photography booth today is bringing me mentally closer...

Vicki bowl part 2

8/1/2010

The piece has been sitting in my shop calling me..."Turn me!"  I have been seeing all these wonderful things on Wood Central that professional turners have done and I am very impressed and a little depressed that mine will not be that impressive.   But I have resolved that I will do what I can do.  

Today I weighed it and it lost 32% of its weight.  This should be fine, though I rarely weigh them this is a special project...right.  I rounded the tenon and then put it in the chuck.    I trued up the outside and then the inside.  I had liked the curve on the roughed out form with a slight curve at the top and slightly more curve at the bottom, but by the time I trued it up it had a nice curve that I liked a lot.  I then went to the inside to follow the outside curve.  I made it a little thicker than I would normally because I knew that when I try and get greedy on a special project I often make a mistake and it doesn't work out, so better safe than sorry.  I also don't know what thickness would work best with my burning. 

I rough sanded the inside but didn't worry about finishing it.  I didn't sand the outside yet, but I did put lines on it.  I used the indexing of the lathe and drew lines to give me equally spaced lines.  I then played with my design. 

OK, My idea on the design....  I have never put designs on my work.  I have worked on burning lines on ornaments with wire to mainly hide my joint, and I put circles in the base of many bowls but never as a major design element.  When I pulled out the wood the other larger piece had a stick figure design.  I think of him as the "man in the tree."  As I spent time trying to figure out what I can do with this piece of wood, I kept coming back to the "man" and how the tree was used for kids climbing and playing.  I also keep thinking about the project of many people coming together.  So my thought is to have "the man in the tree" holding hands around the bowl, like kids playing ring around the (rosey) tree or all those people helping with the project.

8/6/2010
I looked at this design for several days...I had several options as I saw them. I could leave it as it is, I could add head like designs on it to make it look more like people, or burn in that line I penciled in to give me a max. I didn't like it as it is, the heads, though cute in small quantities, are not quite what I was looking for, so I opted to put the line across the top.

I like the design.  I could have done a better job, with practice, of the burning but I think it gives that kid quality like the kids that climbed it for so many years.




My burning tool isn't exactly state of the art.  I got it in the mid 70's as part of a wood-burning kit for kids.  I have since lost the screw on tips but have been using this to put my "signature" in my bowls for several years.  There used to be a cork ring around where the tape is because it gets quite warm there.

Vicki's tree project

7/8/2010

Vicki Jordan had a tree taken down at her house and one that was there while she raised her family and it grew with them.  She was sad when it came down and wondered what to do with the wood.  She didn't want to just burn it and her husband John Jordan, world renown woodturner, could not use it all. So she decided to get a lot of people, professional and amateur, to make items.  The only stipulation other than pay the "fill a box" shipping, is to send in a high quality photo of the piece an maybe have it available for a show if it develops.  I have no intention to make something show worthy but I do want to push myself a little further than I have in the past and try to make it special somehow.

These are the two larger pieces of the four I was sent.  The larger one is about 6.5 x 7 x 5. 

 The first decision was what type of bowl did I want to make?  I looked at the wood, I had been doing a lot of natural edge bowls lately and although I usually don't care if there is bark or not, the bark had some issues on the edges and I would want to try and have the bark so I looked at the other side and noticed I would need to take the pith out. 

I decided to make a "normal" bowl and put the bark end at the base of the piece.  I cleaned it up and put a faceplate in the center of the bowl.

I turned it round and then thought about what I could make.  That branch inclusion near the rim, feature or foe?

I found a basic shape that the bowl wanted to be,

And I roughed it out to let it dry.....

This is an oak bowl about 10 inches across and about 3 inches tall.  After a trip to a class reunion, I was asked by someone there to sell her a bowl for an auction to benefit her church.  She said that she would look at my facebook and figure out what she liked.  I looked to see what was in my todo pile.  I found this bowl and finished it.  It is oak and I have come into some oak lately and I had not done much with it before.  I like a lot of features of it and not sure it all works together.   

I took some pictures to make a card to go with the bowl.  I had put some plastic pipe together to make a portable photo booth.  When I tried before, the pictures did not come out too well.  I thought that I would start to get better at shooting my work.  I like some of these but think I can do better....  I am working on a Vicki bowl (posts to come later, but getting close enough to mention ;) and I want to get some good shots with it.  I posted these first two shots on WoodCenteral hoping to get some tips from people that know what they are doing.  I didn't post the last shot because that is the part of the bowl (and shot) I am least excited about.

I donated the bowl, hoping to get the shipping back and I hope it will bring a reasonable price for them. Not sure what the market is in Hamburg, PA but I am excited to hear about it.