Woodturning can be contagious

We had a family reunion and my brother, Ron, and his family from Texas were able to spend a week with us. He helped me get the garage cleaned up in preparation for the reunion and we had a day and a half together to play in the wood shop.
Ron has been a wood worker for a lot of years and has done some spindle turning for a crib that he made for his grandsons and granddaughter. He hadn't turned any bowls so we set him up with a couple blanks to start practicing.
He is a fast learner and his skills quickly developed. There is a distinctive sound when you "get a catch" and usually a noticeable gouge in the wood when you turn off the lathe. He had to experience the catches in order to learn to control the gouge. He uttered some "Ooops" sounds but he did improve quickly.
Ron made several "treasures" that documented his first attempts.
Then he quickly began to make some really fine work. He finished the second day with a maple bowl for his daughter. I think he also left with the hopes of doing some more turning in his Texas shop.
Usually you try not to share a contagion with anyone, but this time it was really enjoyable to pass this on to my brother.
The reunion was fun and seemed to go smoothly. One of my favorite memories of that reunion will be the time Ron and I spent together in the shop just enjoying each other and playing with wood.

Almost but not quite

I listed this saw for sale on Craig's List. A guy named Gus called me and wanted to buy the saw. We dickered on price, agreed, and then set today at 10:00 AM for him to show up with the cash and pick up the saw.
Guess who didn't show and didn't call! I would have appeciated a call since it would have saved me a few hours waiting around.
So, I still have the saw listed and will hope that someone else responds. I'll probably be a little less trusting with that someone because of this experience.
Anyone want a radial arm saw? This is the ad content:
"Sears Craftsman Model # 113.197150 10-in Radial Arm Saw and Stand. Has Radial Guard Retrofit Kit #RPL 29012 which includes new safety shield for the blade and a new table top (both still in the box). Also includes Freud 10-in combination blade, shaper head with two molding head bit sets, 7-in dado blade set. Saw is wired for 110V. It does run but I have never used it. Located at Lake Buckhorn. Purchaser to disassemble and move."

Woodturning Exhibition

The Northcoast and Buckeye Woodturners sponsored a competition and exhibit at Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster, Ohio. The exhibit runs from July 9 through August 28, 2009. Here are some pictures from that exhibit. The work is stunning.

Buckeye Wood Turners

I travelled up to Clinton, Ohio to Camp Y-Noah on Saturday to attend my first meeting of the Buckeye Wood Workers and Woodturners. The group meets on the third Saturday of each month and combines a short business meeting with a demonstration by group members or visiting demonstrators. They have a show table of members' turning work and photograph each piece for display on their "Gallery" section of their web site.
This month's demonstration was about pen turning by club member, Bob Taylor. His presentation was full of information and technique suggestions. Most interesting to me was his use of some unusual materials - corn cobs, shredded currency, and denim fabric - to make blanks for pens. I learned a lot about using CA glue in finishing a pen blank as well as micromesh for wet sanding acrylics.
Since wood turning is most often a solo hobby, it was nice to be with a group who enjoys the same activity and willingly shares a lot of information with each other.
Following the morning meeting there is often a hands-on activity for members to try out skills. The club has a large Powermatic lathe and many Jet min-lathes for these meetings. It really impressed me as a group seriously devoted to wood turning.
I am looking forward to returning next month when an internationally known turner, Cindy Drozda, will be presenting a members-only demonstration. (If you want to see some beautiful turnings, follow that last link)

An excellent recipe for cleaning brass

I bought a bunch of old post office lock box doors from a vendor in South Carolina and from an offer on eBay. They arrived in the same condition they were in when they were taken out of a post office being remodeled - dusty, dirty, and very tarnished. Along with the doors the South Carolina vendor sent a recipe for cleaning the brass - one portion of Coke to an equal portion of ammonia! I figured that this had to produce some kind of acidic liquid and took precautions: do the work outside, wear gloves, and prepare for really obnoxious fumes.
Well, most of my precautions were unnecessary. I could use my bare hands without any irritation and the fumes were certainly tolerable since I was outside. The impact on the brass was amazing. Although the directions said to let the doors soak for some time and to use a brass brush to clean the decorations, the brass brightened almost instantly and I used the brass brush sparingly. Dipping the doors in water after the Coke/ammonia soak produced an attractive door ready for my project. I applied a coat of spray lacquer as a finish.
I brought the recipe ingredients home to try on some brass house numbers that were so tarnished they were as brown as the painted wood post they were on. They took a little more scrubbing to get the brass to shine but the recipe worked much better than previous attempts.
I will be building some banks that use the post office box doors as a front door into the contents. I have also found a project to make large replicas of a post office truck where the post office box door is the back door of the truck. Right now I am gathering the cherry, walnut, and rosewood for those projects. More of this as the work starts.

Finally finished the cherry cabinet

I am finally finished with a project that I started several years ago. The cabinet is cherry with veneered plywood for the top, sides, and back. It has two dovetailed drawers with cherry drawer fronts. I have procrastinated in finishing this project. First, it was the finish - what to do to get the nicest finish. I finally ended up using a wipe-on polyurethane. It seems to be a nice choice for this piece. Overall I am really pleased with the outcome.

But the main reason that I have procrastinated for months is the poor workmanship on the top. Unfortunately, I planed through the cherry veneer to expose the very ugly plywood layers (try yellow) under the veneer. So there are, not one, but several places on the most viewed surface of the cabinet that look damaged.

I learned a lot with this project. I made my first dovetailed drawers. I used poplar for the drawer frames. This was my first experience planing and fitting the drawers into the cabinet frame. It now resides in my office at Wooster.

In addition to the fitting of the cabinet. I was able to complete a small project to make two letter openers - one from cocobola and one from acrylic. These kits were from Berea Hardwoods so I needed to purchase a drill bit and a bushing set in order to turn the blanks. The construction is simple but there may be an error in the instructions. There is a center band that has a recess on one end that is supposed to fit over a stub of the 1/16" of exposed brass tubing. The picture of the letter opener in the instructions suggests that the center band is reversed. So, I am not sure that my rendering matches the intended assembly. At least they seem to work.

I decided that I wanted to make a number of bowls - some to use up some ambrosia maple bowl blanks and several others to make a set of walnut salad bowls. I wanted to do these on a production line - first turn all the outsides, then turn the insides, and finally, apply the finish all at the same time.

With the time that I had I was able to finish the outsides of one of the ambrosia bowls and three of the salad bowls. When I return to the workshop next weekend, I would like to finish turning the inside and outside of those five bowls. I am able to easily use my sharpening station to keep the gouges nice and sharp.

So, I completed two and a half projects this weekend. A fun two days in the shop.

Epoxy inlaid gift boxes

This project came from the December, 2005 issue of Workbench magazine. It starts with separating a 3/4 inch lid blank from a 3" x 6" x6" turning blank. A decorative symbol or drawing (the article includes three: dragonfly, wheat, and love symbol) is adhered to the lid blank. The lid blank is scroll-sawn and then filled with colored epoxy. The lid and body pieces are then glued to waste blocks.
Using a faceplate the lid is turned to round and the design paper and excess epoxy are turned off the top face of the lid. The lid is finished and then parted off. The body is likewise rounded, hollowed out to match the lid, and parted from the waste block. I used black epoxy for the walnut and jatoba bowls and beige for the burl bowl.
I followed the process as outlined in the article and ended up with four small, attractive and interesting lidded boxes. I used a bowl gouge for most of the turning as opposed to the article's use of scrapers. I had some difficulty with a cloudy epoxy finish which took extensive polishing to remove. I used a sanding sealer and then polished the boxes using the Beall system.
I would like to try the project again using some different designs and unique woods. I would also try a different method for mounting the wood so that I can get a better appearance and form to the lid and box bottoms.