Rough turning bowls

Last year I had a co-worker tell me about a weird piece of wood that his dad had cut, he explained it me and I told him I would like to have it.

The wood in question turned out to be flame box elder.

I split the pieces in half length wise and sealed the ends with paint to slow down how fast they dry out and to minimize cracking.

Fast forward 11 months, I've gotten a chuck for the lathe and I'm planning to make more bowls. I used the bandsaw and made crudely round blanks from one of the halves shown above. This wood isn't completely "dry" yet but also wasn't as green as a fresh cute tree. So I decided to rough turn these and allow them to finish drying before I turn them to their final shape.

I turned two bowls from the half a log piece. The larger is just under 8" in diameter, and the smaller is around 6".  I left the wall thickness roughly 10% of the bowl diameter as is standard practice for rough turning bowls.  I weighed each bowl and then packed them in a paper bag with the shavings/chips turning them. I will weigh them regularly and once they stop losing weight (moisture) I will finish turning them. I have several more pieces of the flame box elder waiting for me to get to using it.

September 2015 Shop Tour

I know I appeared to fall off the face of the earth after my April shop tour but I'm still around and my shop didn't get blown away. Here is the September edition of the tour.

Making Memories While Making Pens

Since I started making pens and pencils I've given a lot of them as gifts. Recently I gave my nephew a pen for his birthday.

Zane's Pen

He loved it but asked if I could make him pencil, I suggested that next time he was up that we could make it together.  His older sister liked that idea also, she even picked out the blank she wanted to use.

I got the blanks ready and next time they were up we made the pen and pencil. I had each of them start out by practice turning a piece of scrap before turning the actual project.

Trinity ready to turn

Zane concentrating on the work at hand

Zane's Cherry mechanical pencil

Trinity's confetti pen

It was a lot of fun to work in the shop with the kids. They both seemed very proud of what we made together.