Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from our Gnomes !

Platter

Recent work.  A 12 inch platter turned from a piece of Corkscrew Willow.  I did a little burning on this one.  The pattern is a branch of a willow.  The finish is walnut oil.

Ducks Unlimited

Our local chapter of Ducks Unlimited is having their annual banquet next week.  I typically donate a turning or two to the cause.

This year I am giving them a duck call.  The call is a double reed call turned from cocobolo and purple heart.

I also did a set of bowls.  The bowls are a 3 piece set where the smaller bowls were cored from the larger bowl.  The wood is maple and the finish is walnut oil.  The larger bowl is about 9 1/2" in diameter.

I will be very interested to see how much the turnings bring in.  

Recent Club Meeting

Below are some cell phone snap shots from our show and tell table at our club's most recent meeting. The comment was made , and supported by others, that the quality of the work being shown has improved in leaps and bounds. See for yourself. 

Recent Efforts

Needed a gift for an upcoming wedding and I was presented with a few boxes of turning blanks.
So I found a few spare hours to spend on the lathe.
 Below is the gift set.  A cocktail shaker, a chiller for white wine, a coaster for red wine and a bottle stopper.  I really like making this set.  The bad news is the supply of the inserts for the cocktail shaker is dried up.  I can't find them anywhere.
The wood is a staved construction using cherry with a walnut spacer.  The bottle stopper is solid walnut.

A group of bottle stoppers.  Mesquite, cherry and walnut.

More chillers. Both from cherry.  The one on the right is staved.  The coaster is from the cut off of the chiller blank.

From the bunch of turning blanks I received I found this Black Locust blank.  The blank was cut with the pith left in and as a result had some light cracks. It was too pretty to not use it for something.  Gloria was looking for a bowl about this size so I used some brown CA glue on the cracks and turned this bowl from it.  It is for our own use so we will see how it holds up.  Walnut oil finish and is about 6 inches in diameter.

August Meeting

Our August meeting was actually a workshop.  The club purchased several Scratch Awl kits and Steve, Jim, and Hank got blanks ready and glued the brass tubes into the blanks.
Then at the meeting 4 lathes were set up ready to go.  Members could then take a turn on a lathe and turn their blanks into handles for the awls.  Jim and Steve were available as a mentor for anyone needing any guidance.  I thought it was a great event.

Below (if this works) is a short video showing how it went off.

 Give it a little time to load.  You should be able to make the video screen larger by clicking the small box in the lower right corner of the viewer.

Edit:
Just before the movie viewer is a link to an online version of the movie.  This will provide a little better quality video and it is the only way to see the video on an iPad.

Link to online version

Mesquite

A neighbor came back from Arizona with a chunk of mesquite.  Once I cut it open on the bandsaw I saw It had a lot of voids and cracks. 

I turned an open vessel out of the one half. The voids were filled with Inlace Resin and crushed turquoise.  The second one was turned as a bowl after a "design opportunity " presented its self. 

The finish is Danish Oil. 

Pictures below.