I won’t say goodbye, I’ll just say, see you later. That’s what I thought when I watched the pool cue rack being wrapped up and taken away by its rightful owner. It’s always a bit hard handing over something I have worked so hard on, even the small things I make and sell will give me pause.  When you sell a puppy or kitten you always wonder if they will love them as much as you do, so it was a great comfort for me to receive quick email from the purchaser telling me how good the piece looked in its new home.

This was the first time I have made an “unfinished” piece for a customer, so I can’t wait to see what it will look like finished and hanging in place. I’ll be sure to post that photo.

Now it’s on to something completely different! I am getting ready for the American Craft Council Show in Baltimore this weekend. I will be one of the representatives from the Baltimore Area Turners who will be demonstrating woodturning. I’ll be making bangles, magic wands, and spurtles. Yes sir, you heard it right, spurtles. What? You don’t know what a spurtle is?

Spurtles Ya'll

The spurtle (or “spirtle”) is a Scots kitchen tool, dating from at least the fifteenth century. Over time, the original implement changed shape and began being used specifically for stirring oatmeal and soups. The rod-like shape is designed for constant stirring which prevents the porridge from congealing and so becoming lumpy and unappetizing.

I guess you could use a spoon, but where the fun in that!

Till next time…..

So what the h*ll does this have to do with woodworking? Like my wife’s pie, the project I am working all is 100% home made. On the bottom of the pool cue rack are three “shaker” style pegs used for holding various ball racks. The plans call for you to buy the pegs and they give you a source. Hah! I can make my own shaker pegs thank you! All I needed was a piece of scrap from the rough cut boards.

From these...

To this....

To these!

Granted, my friend and full time turner, Andy Coates could turn these three pegs faster than me, but at least I can do it myself. I like being the well rounded woodworker, a renaissance woodworker of sorts. Maybe my liberal arts education made me that way…….naw….. it just made me harder for me to find a job.

Here’s a classic example of what can rack up the time for a custom project; templates.  Arts & Crafts furniture that have corbels and repeating patterns are well suited for the use of templates.

Makin' Templates

Coping

Today, it took me thirty five minutes to make these two templates out of MDF.  (in the voice of Professor Fink)

It’s the paper cutting, the spraying, the adhesing, the coping, the rasping, the smoothing, and oy the sanding! See? All that takes time and it’s all the little things that add up.

A keeper!

Speaking of power tools, I admit that I use my radial arm saw rather frequently. I have considered selling my Radial Arm saw and my compound miter saw to get a big 12” Double-bevel sliding compound miter saw so I could save space in my shop. So what stops me from doing this? I know this is a lame excuse, but it my Radial Arm saw has a great story….

It was almost ten years ago in February of 2002 when my first child was born. My wife asked me if I would go purchase a nursing bra for her. Of course I said I would, but I was certain that if a man walked into a bra department, the pervert alarms will go off and you would get bodily thrown out of the store and be told to never come back. So with great trepidation I went forth. Thankfully, she suggested that I go to the brand new mall which was not far from the house.

Gee Lady, can you help me find a bra?

I felt like Beaver Cleaver every time I stood before a female clerk as asked her if they had “x” sized nursing bras. To my horror, each and every store didn’t have the requested size. The last store I went too was Sears, and once again, fearing the pervert alarms, me and a sales clerk looked for the correct size with no luck, so I double timed it out of that department as fast as possible. But lo and behold, what ho? The Sears tool section! Now there’s a bastion of “maledome,” so I took a stroll through the tools. Then I saw it, a radial arm saw. I was currently working on a high chair for our new baby and the design called for lots of compound angles, and that radial arm saw would be perfect for the job. The price was good, then I found out that I they were having a 50% off grand opening sale, so with reckless abandon, I bought that baby (I mean the saw. Believe me, I have been paying for the “real baby” for a LONG time).

Now the next challenge, telling my wife. I got home and walk into the bedroom and she asked me if I found the nursing bra. “Well….no……but I did get a radial arm saw!” So how could I sell that saw after that story?!

Here’s the case.  I am working on a custom project, but I have a set of purchased plans. How’s that? My customer found a design for a pool cue rack that he really liked, and there happened to be a set of plans for them. The problem is that the design is too large for his wall space. My objective is to make the project and customize it to fit the space, and make further design modifications.

The first hurdle: There is a platform on the rack onto which the bottom of the pool cues rest, and there is an upper platform which the tips of the pool cues poke through. To make things interesting, this piece has a “Mission” design (I really think it is a “Prairie Style Frank Lloyd Wright” design) so there are multiple vertical thin stiles that connect the top and bottom.  The plans call for these platforms to be 30” long, but I need to make my version 27” long.

A modern woodworker might scan the plans and upload them into a CAD program or make them over in Sketch up. Me, I don’t need no stinkin’ Sketch up. All I need is a set of dividers.  I made a 27” MDF template that would work for the top and bottom platforms and then I used my dividers to quickly make the adjustment to the design. No computer necessary. WhooYahh!

Dividers make designing easier

Using the router table to transfer the curves

My template insures the curves are correct and the layout for the cue holes and vertical stiles are accurate between the two platforms. I guess watching all those David J. Marks videos has made a lasting impression on me with regard to use templates for reproducible accuracy. Thanks David!

When you are working on a time and materials commission, you walk the type rope of buying right amount of lumber. When the plans call for a certain amount of board feet, you know you have to buy a little more because your rough cut lumber won’t match the cutting diagrams. Such was the case today. I was one board that is 3.5″ wide by 56″ short. RATS! That means I will have to buy another big rough cut board and eat the cost of the board feet that I don’t use. Oh well, I will save the overage for the Morris chair I plan to make one day.

And to double down the on the Murphy’s law, that missing board is one of the key parts to the whole thing, so I will have to go back to the lumber store, let the board acclimate to the shop, then can finish up the milling, which means another day or two lost.

Meanwhile, the rest of the parts are milled and stickered so they can acclimate to the shop. If my shop were temperature and humidity controlled, I would not bother with stickering, but the temperatures have been all over the place lately and so has the humidity levels. I want to give the wood plenty of time to used to my shop before I take it down to final dimensions. If it is going to warp, cup or bow, I’d rather it do it now before I start assembling.

I know some of you lumber experts out there are shaking your fingers at the screen and shouting, “it’s quarter sawn, therefore it is much less prone to movement!” And to that I say, “you’re correct.” But with my luck, it is better to be safe than sorry.

All stickered up

BTW, I would like to go ahead and send out an apology to all you Pats fans out there. I am a bona fide sports jinx. When I watch a game, even for the tiniest of seconds, 9 times out of 10 the team that I root for will lose. Sorry.

Time to break out the beer and get stickered myself….

For most of my furniture projects, I use rough cut lumber for a number of reasons. It’s usually a lot cheaper per board foot compared to the finished lumber at the big box store, and it is available in much thicker sizes than finished stock.

Rough stock

As the name implies rough cut lumber does not look as good as finished lumber because it is really “rough.” It will have saw mill marks along with ink marks, and it might not be perfectly straight, or it might have slight cupping. The key is to see the potential within the board. Michael Angelo said the statue was in the rock all along, and he just brought it out.  So I look for what might be within the board. Another advantage of rough cut lumber is that it gives you more of a margin for error while saving money at the same time.

See the potential within the wood?

I do part of the roughing work by hand. I will hand plane one side of the board flat and straight, then true up the thin side so I have two square sides before I start with using machinery. I could use my jointer, but if you have any twist or bow, I can flatten it out faster by hand without snipe or tear out and save electricity. And sometimes this can be a good workout too, so burning the extra calories is a plus.

I don’t really know why I like the milling part best, but I just do. I wonder if a tailor gets excited when they look at a bolt of fabric the way I get excited looking at my boards.

So a new commission has begun. I am working on a custom sized pool que holder. I hope you will enjoy reading about this project as it progresses along.

And so it begins!

yaakov….

The first piece for my show and tell is another scrap project. I had a small block of bloodwood and a piece of ebony which was destined to become a fret board for a guitar but didn’t make the final round in the beauty contest. Oh yes, I just about forgot, this ebony was given to me by David J. Marks (my hero).

BloodWood & Ebony Jar

I call this piece a “wooden jar.” I’ll admit, I took the easy way out for hollowing, I used a big forstner bit in my Jacobs chuck to do all the work. I really like the combination of the bloodwood and ebony. They both look so good with shiny finish. The shape of the top is unusual and it is easy to grab. Since the very top of the “top” had a tail stock dimple, I covered it up with a little fake gem. With a house full of little girls, it was not hard to find something suitable.

My second project is a “Norwegian Beer Bowl.” Also known as an “Ale Bowl”. “Ale Bowls are drinking vessels. Traditionally, they were used on special ceremonial occasions such as weddings, baptisms and funerals or perhaps on Christmas or New Year’s. A fancy ale bowl was a status symbol for the larger rural land owners in Norway. “ So as you can see, not a big item for the Jewish crowd.

My beer bowl is based on of a design I saw Jimmy Clewes make. I made it out of a green piece of Cherry. Wow, that sounds funny doesn’t it! So I rough turned this piece about five months ago, then did the final turning and finishing work last night. The inside of the bowl has a shellac finish (all natural lac bug excretions) and the exterior has a shellac and carnauba wax finish.

Cherry Beer Bowl

Now here’s something funny. I was looking for information about beer bowls, so I did a Google search on “Norwegian Beer Bowl.” And what comes up? Under images of Norwegian Beer Bowls, an image of my primitive bowl! Check it out! How funny is that! Further proof that “Google is not research.”

Any whooo, I am really pleased with the beer bowl. I can’t decide whether I should keep it or sell it, cause man alive I am interested in trying it out for real! I just wish I had a beer to pour into it. I have a couple more of these in the drying stage, so maybe I will keep one of those.

Stay thirsty my friends!

Yaakov….

This piece (entitled Tiki #3) presented a bit of a challenge for me. Therefore, I stood up the challenge and promptly failed, but at least I learned something.  I used my last piece of “green” Osage Orange and  shaped the scrap into a rectangle using a band saw, then smoothed it out with a jack plane.

Next, I laid out the curved bottom (while keeping the four flat sides) using a flexible ruler, then cut the shape out on the band saw.  This is where I made the mistake. Once I shaped the bottom, I knew that I blew it. What’s the problem? I still needed to hollow out the piece to make it look like a square vase, but how would I hold the piece to the lathe? The foot was too small for a glue block, and it was such an odd shape, a jawed chuck would not work. Hummmm, what to do, what to do?

Houston, we have a problem

I screwed up on my last piece of Osage Orange, so what do you? As they sang in the song, “When you can’t get it all together, improvise.” Words I have never forgotten and always try to apply towards my art. (Extra credit goes to anyone who remembers this song and what TV show it came from). I mounted up the piece between the drive spurs and went ahead and textured the corners using a big spindle gouge.

Texture work done

Solution! I put the bottom of the vase on the drive spur and put a jacob’s chuck with a big forstner bit in the tail stock. The pressure of the forstner bit kept piece on the lathe. Next problem, the mouth of the vessel was not wide enough.  To solve this problem, I would drive the forstner bit in about an inch, then moved the tool rest into position. Now I could use a parting tool widen the opening. Was this somewhat dicey and perhaps dangerous? Perhaps, but it worked to fairly well. The only problem was I could not drill down as far as I would have liked to. Oh well, you can’t have it all.

I did consider making a tight fitting box around the piece which could be attached to a glue block and mounted up on the lathe so I could use my boring bar to hollow out the vessel, but I was lazy and decided to use a carving tool to finish up the inside. Next time, I will leave a big foot that can be parted off for the base so I can use my boring bar to hollow it out.

After I was done, I sanded it out and I was really pleased. Just looking at it, I knew this piece would not need the over the top decorating. Something simple was the order for the day. I thought about piercing it, but with the uneven wall thickness, I decided to drill shallow holes down each side. Each hole was progressively smaller from top to bottom.

For the final decoration, I painted the inside of the drilled holes and the inside of the vessel with a black acrylic paint. Finally, I applied a couple of coats of Danish Oil to help bring out the grain. The final dimensions of the piece are 7.75” x 2.75”.

Tiki #3

I really like this piece, it is unique without being “over the top”.  I would like to make this again in a couple of different sizes. Now the challenge will be to remake it to major league perfection.

Two little cups

These two pieces could have been made into glue blocks or jam chucks, but I did not want to waste such pretty wood. So what can you do with such small pieces? And what can you make quickly so your 2 1/2 year old son can watch?

So I made two little cups about 2.5″ x 2.5″. What can I use them for? Hummmmm; hold your vitamins at your meal, a shot glass (once the Danish oil cures more), toys for the kids, something to put ladies rings in next to the sink…. I don’t know. Ideas?

The one with the Bloodwood base kinda looks asian to me. The other one is just kinda weird, but both were fun to make none the less.

Waste not, want not…..