My first woodturning commission

This week a colleague approached me to ask if I could make something for him.
His house, which he’s been renovating, still had an original doorbell from whenever it was built. The door bell was a round metal plate with a button in the middle, inset into a wood ring which was screwed to the wall.
Time had not been kind to the wooden ring and it was a rotted mess.


So the job was simple, could I make him a replacement wooden ring.

The challenge for me was whether I could actually make a replacement quickly enough to make the job worth while. After all there is a limit to how much anyone is going to pay for a wooden ring. I agreed a price of £10, and figured it would be up to me to make that worth while for me.

Of course, since this is my hobby, I don’t have worry too much about earning a certain amount per hour of work. But I didn’t want to sell my time cheap either.

I had given him the choice of a couple of woods that I knew I had in the garage, and he chose American white oak, since he has used oak throughout the renovation of his house. I’d hoped that what I had would be the right size. Sadly however I was forced to make up a blank by gluing two blocks together. This required some time to make sure the edges were square and flat, and of course some drying time.

Whilst it was drying I decided to play around with a piece of scrap wood. I mentally stopped the clock for this, since I could have just gone back inside and continued later.

I didn’t wait too long, the glue gave a good enough hold quite quickly. Once I thought it was ready, I used the bandsaw to cut the corners off and generally get it to about the right size. I also ensured my centre was just to one side of the glue line. I figured it wouldn’t be very apparent on the finished piece, and I didn’t want to jam my drive centre straight into the glue join and risk forcing it open.

I turned between centres to rough it to round, and turn a spiggot, then switched it into my 4 jaw chuck for actual shaping.

It wasn’t very difficult to do, face off the front to a flat, then measure the diameter of the recess, and carefully used the skew chisel as a scraper to mark the line, I approached it from intentionally too small, taking a series of wider cuts to get the right size.

Shaping the exterior curve was just a matter of holding up the old one in eyeline of the new, and judging by eye where to adjust the shape of the curve.

Then boring a hole through the middle was a case of using the spindle gouge to get the depth with straight-ish sides, just shy of the right diameter. Then again using the skew chisel as a scraper, to get the right diameter.

The finished result I’m pretty happy with, when seen side by side with the original.

I’ve asked for pictures of the before and after with it in situ, so I’ll update when I’ve got them.

As for how long it took, I think I spent a little over an hour working on it. Now I’m not fast, but I’m not that slow either. Some things just take time. I wonder how a professional woodturner can possibly make a living! I guess they turn much higher value items, that have a better time/value ratio.

Turning a burr

Burrs are very interesting bits of wood. They are odd growths that occur on the surface of tree trunks. I’m fascinated by what causes them to occur, since they are basically a mass of knots. Wikipedia on burrs

Burrs typically have all sort of faults within the wood. But the wood is so dense both physically and visually in terms of grain patterns, that you can turn something quite beautiful, faults and all.

At the Hampshire woodturners meetings I go to, I’ve seen a number of examples of really great burr pieces. Of all shapes and sizes, which have often inspired me to consider trying myself. But I rarely justify buying myself more wood pieces when I have so much that I could do with what I already have.

However, recently Kat took a trip to turners retreat, and among the things she brought me back was a piece of burr. I have no idea what tree it’s from, there was no label to say, and I guess it doesn’t really matter.
It’s a fantastically odd looking thing:

My first reaction was ‘where do I start?’

I decided I wanted to make a bowl, but attempt to leave a cross section of the original exterior just beneath the rim of the bowl. I’ve seen examples of this approach, and I like the way you get a feel of the original burr exterior cross cut through the smooth sleek finished bowl.

To mount between centres I first used a forstner bit to drill a hole in the face side, roughly central, and just a little wider than my drive centre.

This was so the drive centre would be locked in place and there is now way this thing would fly off once the tailstock pinned it in position. I brought the tailstock up to try to have the bulk of the burr fairly central. Obviously I wanted the most material centred as possible to get the biggest bowl I could in the shape. Regardless there was a large growth off on side of the bottom that I just had to turn away.

I turned the rough shape of the bowl at the bottom, leaving enough left to be able to shape a little top ‘rim’ for the bowl and keep a sliced cross section. This was fairly tricky, To begin with the whole thing is quite out of balance, and once you are preserving the cross section your turning without constant contact to the wood, so it’s very difficult to get a good cut.

After quite a lot of time, and a few catches that could have been disastrous but were ok, I wound up with the outside profile done.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the most centred position for the bowl meant not such a central cross cut of the original exterior, and so it is rather one sided. I’ll kid myself that this is part of the natural effect I was going for.

You can just about see here that one side of the bowl wall is actually the original exterior, I could have tried to turn it away, but again most of the point of these shapes is to preserve the interesting faults.

Having shaped the outside I sanded and finished, before turning to re-chuck on the spigot that I turned on the base.

I didn’t take any pictures of the hollowing process. I used my spindle gouge to do most of the hollowing, but then used a small bowl gouge to get the final cuts on the inside. I also used a scraper to finish under the rim. This was a last minute decision, as I was hollowing I decided to leave the rim a little wide and give an undercut.
As I hollowed I found one of the faults ran from the outside to the centre, leaving me with a hole in the side. But I’m ok with that.

It’s not easy to see, but I tried to leave a downward curve on the cross section. It ended up being quite a subtle effect, mostly because it’s quite hard, and partly because as I did it I was aware that if I took away much more material I’d weaken some of the smaller sticking out bits too much, and either risk snapping them, or be forced to turn even further to remove them completely.

I spent quite a lot of time sanding down grades, and trying to get a good surface. The ‘wing’ on the cross section in particular I spent some time with a sanding arbour in my drill working down grades to smooth out the fairly rubbish surface I’d left with my not so great tool skills. Ultimately I did quite of lot of hand sanding to try to lose any scratches and avoid just rings left by sanding with the lathe on. I also spent a fair amount of time applying wood wax, and trying to get a streak free finish. This mostly involved giving it time to cure a little, and going around with my lamp shining to show off the surface, and using a buffing pad to work away to a smooth surface.

Having satisfied myself with that finish, I removed the bowl from the chuck and put it to one side. Whilst I turned a jam chuck to remount the bowl so that I could turn away the spigot.
At this point I have enough bits of scrap around that I happened to have an off-cut of oak with a spigot already on, that was just about right. I turned a domed end on it, and then put 4 or 5 layers of kitchen roll in the bowl to protect the surface as I remounted it. Again bringing the tailstock up to it’s original mark at the base of the spigot.

I was pretty pleased that it turned pretty much right back on centre. Which made life much easier as I very gentle turned away the spigot, being careful to take small cuts. I did cause the lathe to stop a couple of times, but mostly my cuts were light enough to not be a problem.

I turned the spigot down to a small pin of wood, then worked on finishing the base. I turned a slight recess curve to ensure the bowl will sit flat on it’s rim. I also refined the curve at the base of the bowl to turn into base a little, which I hope gives it a slightly ‘lifted’ effect when finished.

The last step was off the lathe, slicing the last pin of spigot away with a sharp chisel. I was very careful here, really didn’t want to slip and gouge finished surface.
Once it was pared down as much as possible with the chisel, I sanded by hand the bottom, from 120 grit in all steps down to 1200 grit. Then a very small amount of wax on the base.

And finally it’s finished!

Ultimately, despite the time I put into finish, I’m still not that happy with it. I obviously need to learn more about applying wax finishes. I suspect I need much more patience between stages for a start. But with limited time that can be difficult.

That said, I am pleased with how the overall process went. I didn’t have any real frustrating slips, and it came out as planned, without me having to adjust to cover up mistakes.

Kat took some better pictures of the bowl

Pen turning

Well it had to happen eventually. Given a lathe for enough time eventually you’ll give in to the allure of pen turning.

I had started talking about giving it a go, and not long after Kat found herself in Turners Retreat with her dad. Being awesome, she bought me some supplies for turning pens.

One cigar pen kit, one sierra pen kit, two pen blanks, and a pen turning mandrel, as well as some other wood for other projects.

Interestingly Turners Retreat did not supply any instructions with any of the items. I would have thought that seeing the selection of things being purchased they could have mentioned the need for bushings, to go with the pen sets. They could have indicated the existence of other associated tools even if they didn’t push them too hard.

As it was I placed an order to get a few extra bits and bobs so that I was ready to roll.

First job, cut the blanks to the tube lengths. For this I just used the tubes to set the fence of my bandsaw, and cut each blank. Easy peasy.

Second job, drill the blanks. I picked up one of the inner tubes for the cigar pen and sized it against my drill bits, and needed a 10mm bit. I clamped each section of blank, set up on centre by eye, and drilled.

The cigar pen blanks first, then the blank for the sierra.

Uh-oh…the tube for the sierra didn’t fit in the hole. Stupidly I had assumed that all tubes would be the same. They are not.
Luckily the sierra tube was bigger, not smaller – so no harm done. However, the 10mm bit is already the biggest before I jump up to much bigger Forstner bits. Damn.

Turns out that some pen kits cunningly require a bit just a little out of the normal range. And wouldn’t you know it, they’ll sell you one for £20!! So I put that aside for now, and moved on with the cigar pen.

I tried to square off the ends on my disc sander holding the tubes in place for reference. There are special tools for this, of course, but there are limits to how many custom tools I want to buy(or get bought ) just to get started.

I glued the tubes into the blanks and left them to dry.

Next comes the fun bit, I looked up instructions for the cigar pen and set up the mandrel and bushings as described.

Now for my first real mistake….
The mandrel is adjustable, and I’d played with it a little. So when I setup the blanks I had lengthened the shaft just long enough to tighten the end piece on to clamp everything tightly.
This meant a largely flat surface at the tailstock end, which I attempted to support with a cup centre.

This was hopeless, and didn’t centre the end properly. I should have realised and done something, but like a fool I carried on.

I shaped the pieces, and sanded, but found that closer to the tailstock meant more off centre from the metal shaft. Correspondingly it was hard to get a good finish on the ends with either tools or sanding.

The results were ok, but not great. I realised later I could have lengthened the mandrel shaft, screwed the end piece down much further, and let the screw threaded end of the mandrel shaft centre in the back of the cup centre. Next time.

Having finished the sections as well as I could, I enthusiastically set about constructing the pen. Using some wood blocks in my vice to protect the ends, I squeezed the bits into the ends.

But in my haste and enthusiasm I didn’t make sure I knew where all the bits went. Without instructions I went on what seemed right based on where threads seemed to fit etc. And boy was I wrong.
I think I got just about every fitting wrong! First I got the fittings for the bottom half the wrong way around. And at length had to figure out how to get them out again. (Mostly the shafts of drill bits that where just the right diameter to hammer out the fittings from the opposite side)

Having fixed the lower piece I set the ends for the top piece, only to find nothing held together. Stupidly I had set what should have been the very top fitting, as the very bottom fitting, and vice versa.

Lessons learned – get the instructions, read the instructions…*then* fit things together.

Also, as I’ve said before….*don’t panic* I screwed up everything, damaged some threads whilst trying to undo some mistakes, and ultimately still wound up with this:

Not fantastic, but I’m happy enough for a first try. I think I got quiet a few mistakes out of the way, so I can learn from them next time

The Mallet of many mistakes

In last months woodturning magazine there was a project-in-a-day feature for making a mallet. I caught my eye because the head of the mallet was made from lignum vitae, a very dense hard wood which is normally found in the balls used for lawn bowls. As it happens I was recently given a couple of these by my Grandfather for the specific purpose of using the wood in a turning project.
The handle in the project was made from ash, and I had a similar dimensioned block of sycamore which I figured would do just as well. And so it seemed destined to be my next project.

And here is the finished piece

The eagle eyed woodturner might now be saying…”that doesn’t look like sycamore”. They would be right, and this is because it is in fact applewood. The reason why lies amongst the many things that went wrong trying to do this project.

So I had the materials I needed, and I had step by step instructions in the magazine. So what could possibly go wrong?

The first job was to drill through the centre of the lignum ball with a forstner bit. See the magazine image here

Easy right, just use a clamp to hold the thing still, and away you go.

Not so much. I probably could have spent much more time making a proper base to sit the sphere in which would have kept it stable. But I was trying to follow the magazine, and wanting to make progress. So I got the smallest clamp that I had, that would clamp around the size of the sphere. This is not a small clamp. It was rather difficult to hold it in place, much of the weight of the clamp is not over the drill press, and so I needed to hold it as best I could in place to try and get a good line through the centre of the sphere. Within moments of starting to drill another thing became clear. Removing dense wood with a 35mm forstner bit creates a lot of sawdust. Which makes things difficult to see,k and also jams up the drilling process unless you can remove it. So Wheeled across my dust extractor. But I currently have no way to mount it for the drill press, so I had to try and hold it nearby. This means I am now holding a clamp and a extractor hose, and trying to operate the drill press. Not easy, but not impossible. Then I hit a point that should have been apparent from the outset. My forstner bit is not long enough to go through the whole ball. The chuck of the drill is wider that the bit, so I could drill a little over half way and that was it.

Hmm, the article did not mention this challenge. ‘Obviously’ all I needed to do was turn the ball up the other way, and drill in from the other side. So now I’m trying to hold a vice and a extractor hose, whilst working the drill press, AND I need to be accurate enough to get the lines to meet perfectly.

What actually happened was that I made it connect almost perfectly, but not quite. I wasn’t sure how much of a problem the slight misalignment would cause me. I used a few tools to try and minimise the step between the two drill shafts. At this point I figured it was as good as it was going to get. So it would have to do.

Ok, then onto the handle. The steps said to turn between centres, shape the handle, and the tenon.

And so that is what I did, carefully setting the tenon the correct diameter for the hole I had drilled. I decided not to go too crazy with the finishing at this stage, so I sanded it down but didn’t apply any finish.
The next step was to take the handle off the lath, and use a bandsaw to cut a cross down the tenon. This is so that it fits easier through the hole in the mallet head. Then at the end you insert wedges to hold everything in place and make for a nice feature at the head end.

Keen eyed observes will not there are no wedges in the end of my mallet.

Having cut the cross through the tenon section it did indeed fit through the hole of the head section. And then I just needed to remount between centres. The magazine said that the prongs of the drive centre would fit into the cuts from the bandsaw.

Something I should have noticed is that they talked about a four prong drive centre. I only have a 2 prong drive centre. Though I suspect I would have had similar issues even with the 4 prong, I found it was basically impossible to get the thing remounted centrally. The handle was now turning a little off it’s previous axis.

I started to shape the head of the mallet anyway, I figured that it might not be too bad, slightly off centre only really shows when it’s rapidly spinning.
However the magazine steps said to blend the handle with the head a little. I was starting to shape the head, and noticing that things were not looking as they should. In a moment of madness I thought I might be able to blend the handle down to it’s new axis, and it wouldn’t matter. But of course there was not enough width in the shoulder of the tenon to cope with being turned off centre. A hasty cut and the whole thing was ruined. I also realised that there was no way I would get the mallet head shape in the article without cutting a chunk from the bottom of the ball, to being a wider part close to the handle. The article didn’t mention that either. Of course it would have made things much easier on the drill press if I had STARTED by cutting a chunk from the bottom, and making a parallel flat at the top.

At this point I left it with disgust for a few days. The handle was ruined, and I didn’t think I had anything else of the right dimensions available.

At this point I contemplated how I *should* have approached this.
Step 1 cut a section from one side of the ball, to bring a reasonable width to what will be the bottom of the mallet.
Step 2, cut a parallel shallow flat at the top. Step two, with the ball resting flat on the drill press, with a vice just to stop it spinning, drill as deep as I could go from one end.
Step 3 mount the ball on my expanding jaw chuck, the narrow jaws should fit inside the 35mm hole, I could then put the forstner bit in my tailstock chuck. And drill from the other side with a much better chance of true alignment.

For the handle I figured I should have turned such that the tenon was at the headstock end, and left a piece on the end for the drive centre. Turning the drive centre waste narrower than the tenon I could pass the whole lot through the mallet head without cutting any wedges and remount exactly on the same drive points as turned the handle.

I discovered that I had a piece of applewood that I turned down to a cylinder about a year ago, and left drying inside some paper bags. It was just about the perfect size for the project and I figured I was back in business. But I kept the mallet head from before rather than attempt to start again.
I also didn’t bother to do any handle shaping before I put the mallet head in place. I just turned the tenon. I wanted to be sure that if I had any trouble getting things back on a central axis that I had more material to play with.

I put some work into sheering the base of the mallet head flat and in line with the shoulder of the tenon. To get a nice tight fit. The tenon was just the right width that I needed to hammer it through the lignum.

And so I could proceed to shape the lignum to the mallet shape I wanted. This went mostly ok, though I had far too many catches trying to shape the ends. I still struggle to avoid causing spiral catches, even when I think I’m being careful.

Once shaped, sanded and finished. IT just remained to shape the bottom of the handle which I did eventually parting it off. This then left me with a stub of wood above the top of the mallet that needed to be removed.

So I took it to the bandsaw to remove most of the waste. And decided to sand the remainder on my belt and disc sander.
This was another mistake. The disc sander is very aggressive and difficult to present things at it square on. And so I wound up with an off-centre flat spot on top. I evened it up as much as I could, but in doing so I found I had revealed a gap where the rough hole through the lignum was not perfectly round and the tenon passing through did not fill it.

At this point I figured the easiest thing to do would be to just fill the hole with sawdust and glue. Which is less obvious than a hole, but still not as nice as doing the job right.

The finished article is actually very nice. In some ways I’m loathe to actually use it as a mallet because I don’t want to damage the beautiful lignum mallet head. However this project was a stark reminder that I am still such a novice. So many things went wrong. Blindly following the steps in teh article without thinking it through myself was a mistake. I’m almost tempted to try again from scratch, just to see if I can make it right, or whether I’d just hit another slew of problems. Maybe one day.

Making a chess set part 2 – The Bishop

Feeling good about how the king had gone, I set to work on the bishops.
I decided that the thing to do would be to turn 2 head-to-head in a single length of wood. This would mean I only pay the ‘cost’ of work holding once for two pieces.
As with the king, and all the pieces, this was simple between centres turning. No special chucks, I didn’t even need to engage the prongs on the 4 prong drive centre, the force of just the point and a live centre at the tailstock was sufficient to do all the primary turning. Though I did use a 4 jaw chuck to finish some pieces.

Turning head-to-head meant that whenever I set the calipers for a measurement I would be able to make it on both pieces, and save time.

Fairly quickly things looked like this

I was cautious about not making things too thin until I had to.
In particular doing the heavy wood removal to get things down to rough diameters before going too thin anywhere.

This was a balance of how close to complete I wanted to get them before I applied the finish, and how much would be left to refinish once actually split into separate pieces.

I decided to blend the heads into each other, to ensure that the top diameters would be the same

Once I finished and split the two pieces, I left them intending to finish them at home with a sander, and possibly my small chuck to help the process

What I realised was that the match wasn’t as close as I’d have liked, it wasn’t bad, but the thing that made it easier to get the kings matching was the ability to hold one up against the other.

I realised that I’d be better off turning different pieces in a single length. E.g. a bishop and a knight. That way I’d either be turning something for the first time, or I’d be able to compare to one already made.

So the next day when I went to turn a bishop in ebony, I actually combined it with turning a knight and a pawn. I did worry that the overall spindle might become too long, and vibrate too much. But the pawn being fairly small only added a little more.

In practice I did struggle a lot with bounce of the tool, due to the spindle flexing and vibrating under cutting. But mostly I was able to use very light cuts to diminish it, and sand away what was left.

Here we see the very early stages of setting out the pieces in a length of ebony.

You can see how I first went down the length marking and parting in to show the boundaries of the different body parts. One thing I did hit here is that you need to take your time. Once during the week I turned to take a measurement, turned back and started parting away material, only to realise too late I was one section further over than I should have been. All those sections can look very similar in the early stages. Lesson learned…take your time.

Here we can see how the bishop is exactly the same in this design to the knight, up to the head.

You can also see that the pawn was being turned on the end.

Again I worked through each piece forming the basic shape, working down to making the thinner sections. Rather than do one piece and then move to the next. Partly because I didn’t want a thin neck section already turned when I was taking heavy cuts on the next piece. Also because, being a set, they have elements which match, and so the measuring is common, at least for the base of each piece.

It was about this time that I hit a dilemma for my bishop. I made a shaping cut on the head of the black bishop. And found that I’d hit upon a shape and size which was bigger than the ones I’d already turned, which I preferred.
So I had to decide, do I carry on and turn it down to match the ones already done. Or decide to discard those two as practice and stick with the new shape.

Well since I’d not been terribly happy with how they’d gone, I decided I’d only regret it if I stuck with that shape. So I left the black bishop as the new template for the bishops.

Here we can see me turning another white bishop to match it, again I was turning a bishop head-to-head with a knight.

All the bishops I left with waste wood at the base, rather than completing them, since I knew I’d need to form the cut in the heads. And I’d probably need that waste wood to hold them firm. Not having any appropriate tools to do the job in France. I left them to finish at home.

My plan is to practice on the bishops that I turned first. To figure out what tool will work. Possibly a coping saw, making a fine cut. Or maybe a rotary tool, though I’m wary that rotary tools can easily skip away from where you want to carve.

I’ll update this page once I’ve completed the bishops to show the finished pieces. For now here are the ones I’ve done in their mostly finished state