wood hacker
28th February 2010, 10:54 PM
Having acquired a lathe when my father upgraded I thought I'd give this wood turning lark a go. I started with some pens, simply because I like pens and they seemed relatively easy to do (I now know better) and had some success at producing a half decent pen, not quite to the standard of some of the old hands but working on it.
Having done that I thought I'd give something a bit larger ago. I very quickly found out that turning wood is more than just jabbing a bit of revolving timber with a sharp (or so I thought at the time) hunk of metal. Not one to let an inanimate object get the better of me I sat back and thought well what do I do now. I quick trip to the library yielded a copy of "Turning Wood" by Richard Raffan and a few hours of reading led to many forehead slapping moments accompanied by muttered "so that's how you're supposed to do it"
So armed by my new found knowledge I started again. I even worked though some of the exercises in Richards book, turning coves and beads etc. As useful as they are (and they really are good learning experience) I just had to try something I could then stick on a shelf and say "see that there, I made that". Once again from the book there was a nice little step by step exercise making a vase. So having found a suitable hunk of timber and roughed it down I managed to do the base quite nicely including the grooves for the chuck to grip when turning the top. So I finished the base, polished it up and then proceeded to the top.
Well this is where things started to get a bit interesting. Whilst hollowing out the top I found that you have to be careful how you approach the timber. I think what brought on this sudden epiphany was when my proto-vase became a missile flying across the workshop when the chisel (yes I am blaming my tools) decided it wanted to grab hold of the timber. Well getting forcibly ripped from the chuck didn't do the groves around the base much good but I remounted and finished the job.
I'm not sure what the timber actually is as I found it sitting around under the house after we moved in and it looked pretty old. I do know that it is fairly hard and resonable dense at somewhere between 1050 - 1100kg / cubic meter. Any ideas as to what it can be? The piece has been sanded to 240 and finished with HUT wax. Final size is approx 150mm tall by 70mm wide.
Having done that I thought I'd give something a bit larger ago. I very quickly found out that turning wood is more than just jabbing a bit of revolving timber with a sharp (or so I thought at the time) hunk of metal. Not one to let an inanimate object get the better of me I sat back and thought well what do I do now. I quick trip to the library yielded a copy of "Turning Wood" by Richard Raffan and a few hours of reading led to many forehead slapping moments accompanied by muttered "so that's how you're supposed to do it"
So armed by my new found knowledge I started again. I even worked though some of the exercises in Richards book, turning coves and beads etc. As useful as they are (and they really are good learning experience) I just had to try something I could then stick on a shelf and say "see that there, I made that". Once again from the book there was a nice little step by step exercise making a vase. So having found a suitable hunk of timber and roughed it down I managed to do the base quite nicely including the grooves for the chuck to grip when turning the top. So I finished the base, polished it up and then proceeded to the top.
Well this is where things started to get a bit interesting. Whilst hollowing out the top I found that you have to be careful how you approach the timber. I think what brought on this sudden epiphany was when my proto-vase became a missile flying across the workshop when the chisel (yes I am blaming my tools) decided it wanted to grab hold of the timber. Well getting forcibly ripped from the chuck didn't do the groves around the base much good but I remounted and finished the job.
I'm not sure what the timber actually is as I found it sitting around under the house after we moved in and it looked pretty old. I do know that it is fairly hard and resonable dense at somewhere between 1050 - 1100kg / cubic meter. Any ideas as to what it can be? The piece has been sanded to 240 and finished with HUT wax. Final size is approx 150mm tall by 70mm wide.