General Craft & DIY discussion

A decade or more ago, I bought my first lathe. It was a $100 cheapie from Harbor Freight & I pretty much hated it from the day I set it up, BUT it taught me a lot. I'd never used a lathe before. I vaguely knew there were 2 types: spindle & bowl turning. I had no clue if I'd like either one.

My first major project was making a chess/checker/backgammon set. I turned all the maple & walnut pieces on this horrible lathe. I found out that it's metric threads didn't accept the chucks that I wanted. I found out that I really wanted to turn bowls, not pens or other projects, but that I LOVED turning bowls. All told, it was a great investment.

A year later, I got a new lathe, a Delta with a 12" swing & 3' bed. It cost me $600, but I spent almost the same amount buying 2 good chucks with a bunch of different jaws, too. Then I was set up to really turn bowls.

Being too cheap to buy wood to practice on, I pulled wood off the firewood pile. It was green & just from common trees I found around. I couldn't believe how gorgeous the grain was. I found that I could dry the bowls quickly by sticking them in the microwave & I started turning out a lot of them.

About 5 years later, I'd sold enough bowls to buy a new lathe, a $3000 bowl lathe with a 24" swing. It has one of those fancy, variable speed AC motors with a programmable controller. The biggest bowl I've turned on it finished at 21.5" in diameter. Wow!

I also have a tiny lathe with a 3" swing that's only 12" long. It's good for little projects like pens & such. I don't use it much, but got it cheap at a show. Again, the chuck was half the cost.

Does anyone else turn?

Firewood turns into some mighty nice bowls, often against common wisdom. For instance, black walnut is prized for its dark heartwood. There's usually just a narrow band of light colored sapwood & sawyers make sure they get rid of it. They also never make boards out of tree limbs because the wood grain will warp the boards since it is reaction wood, but this little bowl was turned out of a black walnut limb & came out pretty nicely, IMO.

I turn all sorts of odd things on the lathe. In an attempt to both collect wood & learn about each kind, I started turning eggs out of each kind. My family makes fun of them, but each tells me a lot about the wood. It shows the grain in all directions and, if it is green, how & how much the wood shrinks each way, too. While I leave most unfinished, I do sand & put a coat of poly on some of them so I can see the color of the wood.



I have about 75 different species of wood turned into eggs now. I built a turn table with holes in it to display the eggs. It was always a big draw at shows. Another property that becomes clear is just how dense some woods are. A tiny grapevine egg weighs about as much as a willow egg 4 times its size. Actually being able to hold the two at the same time brings this home.

In another topic, Foxtower was mentioning he didn't have room for a lathe, a very good point. It takes more than I originally thought, depending on what you're doing, of course. The small lathes for doing pens & other small projects aren't a big deal, but projects over a few inches are plain filthy. Wood chips & shavings fly everywhere.

I have an 8'x8' corner of my shop sectioned off with 7' plastic walls to keep the mess down. My shop ceiling is 10' high & I still wind up with chips on the other side of the shop. The plastic walls are great for a couple of reasons, though. I can easily move or step into them if I need to & I still get plenty of air flow. Best of all, when a piece flies off the lathe, the wall doesn't shatter, but slows the projectile down a lot.

I like to turn bowls out of green wood & that means lots of curly shavings plus chunks of bark flying around. If I didn't contain them, they'd fly all over the place. The dust from sanding is even worse & there really isn't any way to collect them. I've tried & it's just a noisy waste of time & effort.

I don't know what to do with all the shavings. One 16" bowl 4" deep will fill up a 100lb feed sack with shavings. I've started piling them to see if I can start using them for mulch. If I put them on gardens green, they attract too many bugs, molds & other bad things. Since I occasionally turn walnut & have sharp chunks in them, efforts to turn them into horse bedding haven't worked out well. The time I spend cleaning to make sure the shavings I gather are usable by them just isn't worth it.

Horses will founder if they stand on walnut shavings. There's something in the wood that leeches into the soles of their feet. A bad case of founder can mean the horse has to be put down.

I add shop saw dust, shavings and wood chips from spring pruning to the compost pile. Snakes love to hang out in the warm "bedding", and as long as most of the pile consists of other organic material like hay and leaves by the time it gets to the gardens the wood waste has pretty much disappeared.

I get too much for the regular mulch pile for the veggie garden. Seems silly to pay for wood mulch if this stuff will do.

This is a very interesting series of posts.
Learned new things.
I'd never heard the term "reaction wood" before.

A hackberry tree came down in the northwest corner of our field during the winter. I've been turning bowls out of it. I made a super thin one, just under 1/16" thick walls. The wood was green & frozen. Attempts with the wood thawed didn't work out so well. Too much flex. Hackberry has an interesting grain somewhat like elm, kind of small & stringy. It hardens up very tough, though.

It's mostly a creamy whitish wood, but the heart is very dark. It gets kind of an ugly gray cast to it when it dries so I've been staining it with my rust stain. That makes the bowls pretty.

The bark is staying on very well. Some will say this is because it's a winter-kill, but I think it always has a tight bark. Can't recall for sure, though.

Those are really beautiful, Jim =]

Thanks, Jessica. It's amazing how pretty so many woods are naturally. I don't understand why so many buy 'exotic' woods. We have plenty all around us.

Agreed. My father is a cabinet maker so I grew up appreciating wood in all its abilities and beauty.
Jim wrote: "Thanks, Jessica. It's amazing how pretty so many woods are naturally. I don't understand why so many buy 'exotic' woods. We have plenty all around us."

Our neighbor had two big cedar trees go down last fall and we're going over this spring to saw them into manageable lengths and stack them to dry. Not sure of the plan, but husband is thinking about doing some gun cases I think.

I brought back a couple of really nice Sugar maple bowl blanks from our recent trip to MD to see the new grandmonster. (Turns out, Colin is the happiest baby I've ever seen. Rarely cried even though he was teething. Mostly just chortled.)

We stopped by a friend's house who just had a big tree come down. I used his chainsaw to cut them out & carried them home. Hopefully I'll get to turning them tomorrow. I had to sharpen his saw & taught him how at the same time. Hopefully he'll do it more often. It was awful.

A gal at work wants 6 bowls for Xmas presents, so she brought me 3 poplar logs. They've been down a while & I've gotten 4 - 11" bowls out of 2 of the pieces so far. One has some red in it very similar to the red I've seen in Box elder. Anyone else ever seen that stain in poplar? I never have.

I'm hunting today. The Boss & I decided I am allowed to get a new mid sized lathe. My old one is slightly bent & the stupid mesh gear for varying the speed hasn't worked for 5 years. The bend hasn't been a huge deal for bowls, but it's been getting worse. The wheels on the grandmonster's chomping grasshopper are definitely off center. That's OK in this case, but it's just too far out for most turned toys.

My little lathe is too small - it only has a 2" swing (can turn up to 4" in diameter) & 12" long. My big lathe is too big - a 24" swing, but only 16" long since it is for bowls. I do most of my work on the mid sized lathe, currently a 14" swing 36" long. So I want another about the same size, but it's going to have a variable speed AC motor like the big lathe that allows me to turn at really slow speeds.

The reason my current one is bent that the slowest speed is around 475 rpms. That's way too fast for some of the weird crap I turn. It's often green which means it can have a lot of water weight to unbalance it. There's often voids or weak spots that suddenly show up, too. That's why it's bent now. A root ball I was turning chucked & spun up fine, started turning but with a lot of vibration. It suddenly cut loose & bounced around between the bed & tool rest before climbing out & hitting me in the chest. Damn near killed me. It hit so hard I was knocked back against the big lathe 6' away. A foot higher & my smile wouldn't be so pretty.

So I have spent the morning combing the web for a new lathe. It's a very complicated search. Robust, Laguna, & Powermatic are out of the running since I don't want to spend more than $1500. Those are 16" lathes & run over $3000, what I paid for my big lathe. I'm looking at around $1000 for a Jet 12" or $1350 for their 14". There's a 12" Rickon that seems about the same as the Jet 12".

I really wish I could compare apples to apples, but the marketing types seem to make this impossible for anything now. If 2 lathes have a 6amp 1hp variable speed AC motor, why does one list a low speed of 60 rpms & the other 250 or even 450?!!! It's enough to drive me batty.

I think Woodcrafters has them all. The closest one is a mile from my work. I hate driving all the way in there on my day off, but I'm tempted. I should probably wait until Monday, though. Less crowds, too.

I wound up getting the Jet 1221VS yesterday & still haven't turned it on. I have to lower the bench it sits on & that led to cleaning up, reorganizing, etc. I didn't buy the extension for it, either. I can get it most any time. While I would have saved $25 now, I'll save even more if I don't buy it at all & I probably won't want or need it often enough to make it worthwhile. Maybe.

Weirdly enough, Jet doesn't offer a variable speed AC motor on any of their 14" lathes, but they do on their 12", 16", & 20" models. I even called Jet tech support to make sure.

I didn't get a lot done today, but did fiddle with & turned out a nice candlestick that's offset. Kind weird, but cool. Lots of possibilities there. This was the fourth & best attempt, so far.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...

I couldn't do this on my other lathe because it ran too fast. This one dials down to very slow speeds, but I wound up turning this at about 250rpm.

I like that candlestick.
But I'm always worried about the cats knocking them over.

Too bad Foxtower isn't around any more.
I used to enjoy reading the exchanges you two had.

Thanks. Once it's finished, I'll put the picture there. I made another out of a bit of Black locust & gave it a slice of walnut for a base. Both came out of my woods.

I'm having a terrible time putting the finish on. I always used to use Viva paper towels for small projects. It was smooth & had almost no fiber loss, so it was a cheap way to do it & I could get a kind of neat rubbed look. They've 'improved' their paper towel, at least this variety, until it's just like Bounty or any of the others. Why?!!! I keep 2 paper towel rolls in my finishing area because I want both kinds.

I hate new & 'improved'.
:(

I miss Foxtower, too. He did some really cool, off the wall stuff. It's a shame his Internet & computer stuff ticked him off so that he quit the web & us.

http://www.thewoodwhisperer.com/artic...

an interesting (more for you than me probably) site.

He's got a group going on goodreads, but it's hardly active: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

Thanks! Hadn't known about that page or group. I'm checking it out.

He wrote this book, you can do the "look inside" thing on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1440...

Thanks! Looks like it is great for beginners, but it is a subject near & dear to my heart. That's exactly how I do my projects, a combination of power & hand tools - the best of both worlds. I'm going to put it on my wish list.

I'd like opinions on some candlesticks I turned offset. They're here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...

I don't need compliments, but opinions on what you think worked well & what didn't. There's a dozen different ones & I don't like some of them. I didn't think they'd look good, but wanted to try & see. Actually, I don't really like any of them completely. I like bits & pieces of most of them, though. The bits that draw or repel your eye would help me turn some decent ones.

My evening got hijacked by a woodworking friend. He had a huge cherry tree pushed down by a dozer doing some clearing that he hadn't planned on. He didn't have a big enough saw to cut up the trunk, so called me. It took a couple of hours, but I came home with 4 bowl blanks. They pretty much fill up the back of my little pickup!
https://www.goodreads.com/photo/group...

I'm not sure if I'll make any 24" bowls out of it - maybe 1 or 2. I'll probably chop them up a bit more, but it will keep me busy for the next couple of weeks. Green cherry starts checking really fast. I think I'll take tomorrow off & get to turning.

For the first time in 9 months, I turned a couple of bowls from the paulownia tree I cut up this weekend. I just did one 8" bowl, skipped a day due to other chores, & then did another one yesterday since it was raining so I had the time & energy. Both came out good; a little surprising since it's been so long & I've never turned this species green before.

The lathe is one of the very few power tools where the angle of the blade to the work is all up to me. If I use the right tool at the proper angle & speed to that particular shape & grain, the results can be smooth as silk. A slight miscalculation during one of the hundreds of cuts can make an unrecoverable mess, though. I have a couple of decades of experience making such errors, but I didn't make any these two times so I'm tickled.

After turning 3 bowls for some practice after my long hiatus, I decided to try a natural edge bowl. That's one where the bark stays on the rim of the bowl. I had it partially turned before I realized that a branch had rotted inside the bowl & the base would be right in the middle of it. Everything was going well until the very end when it suddenly flew out in pieces leaving a huge hole. I'm debating whether to try to fill it with clear epoxy or not.

The bark seems to be hanging on to the bowl really well, so I'm going to dry it fully & then decide. The bark may yet decide to depart. Depending on the time of year & tree species, the bark doesn't always hang on to the rim. Some say it stays on best if the wood is cut in the winter, but it's more of a crap shoot, IMO.

Hey Jim... call it a colander and charge extra!

So what did you do? I can't imagine epoxy and wood get along too well.

Jim wrote: "After turning 3 bowls for some practice after my long hiatus, I decided to try a natural edge bowl. That's one where the bark stays on the rim of the bowl. I had it partially turned before I realiz..."

I can't picture it in my mind so I'm useless for a suggestion.
Unless...it becomes an art on the wall piece, or a hanging lamp?
(I may be waaaaay off, not being able to picture it)

Here's a picture of the first 3 drying in & on the microwave.


If you look on the right side, you'll see a bowl screwed to the wall that's a natural edge that didn't work out. It warped too much while I was turning it. Now I use it as kind of a catch all shelf.

Below is the Paulownia natural edge bowl with the side/bottom busted out due to a rotted branch which I found as I turned it. I was on one of the very last interior cuts when the rotted area suddenly flew off.





I'll probably try to fill the gap in with clear epoxy, although that's tough to do with an area this big across that much & many curves. It takes a lot of carving & sanding, not to mention a day for each pour. I'm not sure it's worth the time & trouble. Probably not.

Jim wrote: "Here's a picture of the first 3 drying in & on the microwave.


If you look on the right side, you'll see a bowl screwed to the wall that's a natural edge that didn't work out. It warped too much ..."

It reminds me of an art piece i did that i never finished. Part of it was a teeny piece that looks like your bowl with the hole.

About 1.5 months ago, I posted some pictures of 3 Paulownia bowls drying in & on the microwave.


Here they are finished.


The natural edge bowl had the side/bottom busted out due to a rotted branch which I found as I turned it. I was on one of the very last interior cuts when the rotted area suddenly flew off.





I filled the gap in with clear epoxy; tough to do with an area this big across that much & many curves. It took 3 or 4 pours of epoxy & each takes a day to dry. There was a lot of handwork to finish it. From a financial perspective it wasn't worth the time & trouble, but I think it looks pretty good & is now useful. Here's a view of the base.

Jim wrote: "About 1.5 months ago, I posted some pictures of 3 Paulownia bowls drying in & on the microwave.


Here they are finished.


The natural edge bowl had the side/bottom busted out due to a rotted bra..."
I admire your patience ! Nice work on the bowls Jim. Very interesting how you adjusted the one. It's unique.

Thanks. It's fun & interesting seeing how different woods turn. Paulownia surprised me since it's a lot stronger than its fast growth & light weight would have led me to believe.