Archives

Tools / Woodturning / Woodworking — 4 Comments
30
Dec 20

Snowman platoon

So along with the Gnomes, I wanted to do a batch job of something for solstice gifts from the lathe, and while I initially thought trees or baubles, it came down to snowmen in the end. So, first off, ordered a few sycamore spindle blanks from the Carpentry Store.

At that time, and at the moment, they’re one of the most economical (ie. I was being cheap) sources, but only for spindles. I mention this because we’re now two days from Brexit kicking in across the water in the UK, and already the costs of importing blanks from my normal source at HomeOfWood.co.uk has jumped (though not as much as it has for his continental customers). It’s a very small complaint compared to what’s coming, but the woodworking hobbists here in Ireland may be facing into having to find either local suppliers or continental ones, so costs may be rising right as we face into the damage done by the covid pandemic to our economies. So, y’know, yay. Kinda glad I stocked up over the last few months.

First order of business was to rough out the blanks.

The normally really fast anglefinder off aliexpress wasn’t quite long enough to get to the center reliably on the 70x70mm blanks, so back to more traditional methods.

Then into the lathe and rough out to round. No neat tricks or features here, just the routine operation. Round with the roughing gouge, turn a tenon on both ends, measure to find the half-way point between shoulders and part it in half there.

I really need to get a ring center, this cone live center is fine and all but it wedges something awful into endgrain like this. I did buy a ring drive center, but I don’t think you can use those in the tailstock without a fair amount of grease and smoke. F.Pain talks about using them in The Practical Woodturner but he’s also talking about lathes made from wood and a few other things that don’t really get done much today because (a) we have better alternatives and (b) the skills are mostly lost.

And that’s them all done (along with the blanks that became test gnomes and test trees and so on). Every spindle blank gave two snowmen blanks (and you’ll note there are some missing, they got turned into a test snowman and a wood witch for a friend who’s recovering from the nasty bug of the year).

First thing to buy after you buy a lathe, is a large dustpan and brush.

Also, I think this is what killed my air compressor. It has since given up the ghost with a loud pop, a hiss as it dumped the full tank of air, and a strong stench of burning oil and rubber. Le sigh.

Next up, story stick. Because I don’t want to make that many snowmen and have them all horribly different and disfigured, that’s a Calvin and Hobbes routine.

I used nails here, driven in at the lines and then filed the heads off with the grinder. That’s a standard approach and I think I’m going to completely ditch the entire thing as a bad idea from now on. Yes, you can mark lines with the nails readily enough, but the lathe does want to grab the whole thing out of your hands if you’re clumsy and storing this would be a PITA. I plan to copy this onto a piece of thick-ish plasticard with lines drawn on it and that’ll store in an envelope more readily. Much much easier for the small shed. And marking off every line with a pencil is just easier than with nails, and that’s what I did with the gnomes.

Okay, so that’s the cutoff at the base marked out with a skew cut, and the head has been taken to thickness with my shed-made parting/beading tool thing.

And that’s the middle snowball thicknessed (the thorax? Absnowmen? What body part categories does a snowman have?). And pencil lines marked in at midpoints by eye. And now came the humility lesson.

I tries this with the skew. Yeah. Nope. At this point (and I’m pretty sure, now too), my skew skills were not up to the task. I mean, this was a month of work ago, and we all know that time dilation is in full effect here in 2020 so this was many years ago now, but still. I eventually had to give up on the skew and do the rest of the blanks with the spindle gouge.

Also, I’m going with BB Turning’s advice here about not getting perfect spheres in a snowman. Yup. That’s exactly what I did. Totally deliberately.

And then on to my woodturning secret, buying 80 grit sandpaper in bulk.

And from 80 grit up to 220 grit and then everything was set aside for finishing (the idea being to batch things, so you do each step and repeat, not follow through on every piece like normal).

That’s as close to a montage as I’m getting (also those other new blanks in the last one there were for trees and there are still a few out in the shed today, mocking my working speed).

At this point, various large work projects as well as the gnomes ate all the shed time and it took a while to get to the next stage. But eventually, the snowmen got back on the lathe for sanding sealer, sanding to 360 and then yorkshire grit and hampshire sheen wax (because it’s toy safe).

Then drilling for a nose was done by hand with a 3.5mm drill bit. And that meant it was time to crank out some noses….

Step jaws (which are really meant for expansion mode inside bowls but they do grip down to a small diameter internally and are more stable than my pen jaws), and a dowel length bought some years ago in Woodies of all places. It’s probably poplar, at least it’s not pine.

And yes, I did redeem myself doing all of this with the skew. And after the first few noses, I actually got the rythym of it, and okay, Steve Jones’ job is safe, but at least I wasn’t quite so dismayed by the results this time.

And yeah, that dowel goes right through the headstock spindle and you just pull out the 70 or 80mm you need to work on at a time.

Mark off the nose length with dividers…

Deepen the mark for the base of the nose with the point of the skew and another mark for where the tenon will end (judged by eye, about 5mm).

Shape with the skew – no, not scraping, but cutting, like a real turner 😀
Don’t look too close at that bevel btw. I’m going to sort out my sharpening jig, honest.

Sand to 120 grit at this stage, and on the other side of the work so I don’t have to move the rest.

That there is a tiny dinky Moore&Wright vernier calipers that only goes to 70mm but is so damn handy to have to hand in the shed. Not giving up my 300mm one but this one is remarkably handy for stuff.

Also, that trick where you cut down to dimension with the caliper itself? Managed that a few times, kinda. Mostly it was just parting tool and guesswork but I got it once or twice.

And then part off at the headstock side of that tenon, using the skew to get as much tenon as possible.

Now pull through the next 80mm (stop the fecking lathe first you daft eejit) and repeat 20 times because you miscounted how many you needed.

Honestly though, I was really happy with those.

Drill a bunch of holes in some scraps and get out the airbrush and….

Two-tone carrot noses 😀

Oh, and also drill a 6mm hole in the top of every snowman’s head for hats, which you can turn in a few different styles (but you’ll have to explain the daft punk headgear to everyone apparently).

Chestnut ebonising lacquer for the hats works well I found.

And now you just have to post them off mid-lockdown. Well, most of them. The one in the Fez is staying with us, and one or two others might as well. We’ll see.

Honestly, I only did 18 of them (including the prototype). I don’t know how BB Turning gets through hundreds every year without going loopy or absolutely mastering the skew.

Overall, I’m happy with them. They came out pretty well, and honestly adding the eyes and arms and things doesn’t give them a lot more. I mean, I did make a few with eyes, but I wonder how long those eyes will remain CA’d in place…

(the original prototype)

Also, I did finally ask Steve Jones about the kit he’s using (yes, I know it’s not the tool, but still) and as a result…

Ashley Iles 1″ flat skew. Not that spendy, about forty euro, but it’s such a more solid tool in the hand. Looking forward to trying it once I sort out the sharpening jig. It’s flat on the faces and round on the edges, so when I get a catch and the work slams it into the rest, it won’t dig out as sharp a gouge as mine does right now.

Tip came dipped in wax to prevent slicing yourself when unpacking it. It’s the small stuff like that that makes the difference with good tools like this – the tang is a bit longer, the fit and finish is that bit better and when you put that all together, it’s just an entirely different class of tool even though there’s no one thing I can point to and say “this is why”.

Really looking forward to using this. And still have some more spindle blanks…

Woodturning / Woodworking — 2 Comments
27
Dec 20

Gnome army

Saw Rebecca Degroot’s video on making a gnome:

Looked like fun, so I made one or two while messing about with decorations.

Then I thought they’d be nice presents for the other kids in Calum’s class, so batch work time. I didn’t have many blanks readymade for this though (I’ll have to remember to stock up in October for next year) so I took a standard CLS lumber 4×2 and cut it down the middle on the bandsaw into two 2×2 rectangles and used the roughing gouge to round them up.

Softwood in general isn’t generally recommended for turning but with sharp tools it’s fine for basic stuff like this. I had a very minimalist story stick with just two ticks on it to mark out the body and a length for the tenon, and marked off the blank with it.

Then stick the point of the skew into the lines to deepen them.

Then with the skew, turn the top and bottom corners of the body and smooth out the bit in between to a gentle barrel curve. Make sure to overexpose the camera if possible.

Then use the parting tool to turn what will be the tenon down past the shoulder at the top of the body, but not all the way as you need some strength left in it to sand the body.

Then swing in the dust collector and sand up to 240 grit. This is the secret to a beginner’s woodturning – buy 80grit sandpaper in bulk.

Dousing with sanding sealer before the last grit to stiffen the grain a bit.

Then hampshire sheen wax (because it’s now certified food-and-toy-safe) and buffing.

And now part the tenon down to 6mm (using the wrench-as-a-gauge trick which is complicated by me not having very many wrenches that small)

And part off and into the box it goes and we move on to the next section of the blank and repeat 19 more times…

Next, hats.

I didn’t have many blanks at all for this, so half were a glued-up blank made from walnut offcuts and half were stained CLS lumber. Again, very simple marking out, then use a spindle gouge to turn the rough shape, and put a tenon at the top using a skew.

This is why we prefer to use larger tenons by the way, a 3mm tenon with a skew is…. great practice for the skew 😀

Then sand, seal, sand again and wax…

Then part off, being careful to undercut as you part so the hat is concave underneath to match the convex top of the body. Then completely give up on turning and just cheat by buying several bags of wooden balls two years ago and forgetting what they were for and just using them here for noses and baubles and a 6mm dowel sanded down to 3mm to fit the noses. And drill holes in the body for the nose and under the hat for the body’s tenon and in the balls for the nose tenon and hat tenon, which is awkward till you realise you can hold the ball using mole grips rather than trying to clamp one in a vice or making a jig.

So 20 sets of these, and then a bag of faux fur…

And now under supervision from the 8 year old, who will manage the matching of bodies to hats to beards and specify beard length, assemble everything using a full bottle of CA glue…

And then packed up and sent off for delivery by Calum.

They were well received 🙂 We even got some photos of the gnomes in their new homes…

Overall, good skew practice and fun to make. Must do them again next year, but this time, get some blanks in around October and start making them in November 😀

Resin / Woodturning / Woodworking — No Comments
30
May 20

ex-Xmas Tree Xmas Tree Decorations

So a few years ago, some woodworkers on a podcast made an April Fool’s joke about how they always picked the same species of xmas tree so that they could mill it up for lumber after the holidays and make a chest of drawers out of them. Which was funny, until another woodworker went and actually did it (with small boxes not a chest of drawers, because there’s a lot of timber in a chest of drawers):

And this was important because until this point, the several xmas tree trunks in the back yard were just there because I had been too lazy to make a second trip to the recycling yard with them. See, after the holidays I take our now-long-dead-and-drying tree into the back garden and hack off all the branches with a hatchet and bag up the branches and the two kilograms of needles that have fallen off them on the ten-yard trip from living room to back garden. Those bags go to the recycling center because if you tried to just shove the tree into the car to bring the whole thing there, you’d be cleaning pine needles out of the car ten years later.

But now, there was a reason I was keeping those trunks 😀

And what better time than during a pandemic lockdown to do something with them? So, first up, take a glazier’s hacking knife and debark them and lop off the top foot or three until we get past the really bad shakes and checks on the surface (these things have just been drying outdoors untended for up to five years now).

Then I took the more manageable-in-my-shed lengths into the shed and cut out all the pieces that looked salvagable, trying to get at least one chunk from every trunk so we’d have every year represented. The bandsaw rendered the rest into firewood.

The oldest two trees just resulted in a handful of chunks but the most recent trees yielded a lot more material (that binbag is shavings btw, I had to empty the extractor that day)

Some of the smaller pieces turned out to be spalted when rough-turned, which is kindof pretty in a monochrome sort of way.

The shakes in this piece were just too large to ignore though, so out with the hot glue gun to make a dam and it’s resin time!

Daler-Romney pearlescent acrylic ink in sun-up blue, in case you’re interested.

It’s pretty nice stuff, and handles very well. I may need to get a few more of these. The resin pour proved messier than expected though…

And yes, the whole damn thing did in fact leak all over the live center, lathe bed and drive center and why yes, that was so much fun to clean up, how did you guess?

You couldn’t even really see the resin and its colour in the end. But it held the piece together while I chucked it up then put a jacobs chuck and 7mm drill bit into the tailstock and drilled out the center for an insert from a kit (bought mine from The Carpentry Store). I turned a small test shape to see how the wood handled, sanded it, sealed it, thought “no, that needs colour” and stained it then thought “wait, sanding sealer and stain should have gone on in the opposite order, oh bother”, and then promptly bent the ferrule learning how to get the head and ferrule into the tube running through the center.

Still. It’s only a test piece, I have three-and-a-bit trunks to play with still. And the stains don’t react too badly to pine (and it’s interesting to see how they react when you seal the surface first), and the buff-it gold compound I used as embelleshing wax works nicely (gold because, you know, xmas colours). So I learned a few things (like don’t try to pour resin into a crack in a piece while it’s still on the sodding lathe). Worth doing.

So there you go, an ex-xmas tree xmas tree decoration 😀

← Older Entries