Been spending some time down at the community (high school) woodshop "class" this winter. It's nice to have a shop available where you don't have to clear all your crab pots and bicycles out of the way just to turn around, and their 24" planer isn't bad either. In any case, I decided that my first project was to be a set of 12 foot long oars for the skiff, just in case the motor decides to quit again. It ain't easy to get ANYTHING 12' long shipped up here to SE Alaska, and I just couldn't see paying hundreds of dollars for oars that are going to sit out in the rain all year anyway.

After finishing the oars and fitting in a couple of new shelves for the kitchen cabinets (did I mention how nice it is to have access to a 24" planer?) I had a few shop sessions left and started looking at the wood lathes sitting in the back. It's been a LONG time since I've done any wood turning, but I remembered that I enjoyed it back in high school shop. Around here there's several guys that sell wood bowls made out of local birchwood, including some pieces I've seen with some with some pretty nice color variations caused by fungal infections of the wood. It reminds me a bit of the patterns you get from spalting in maple. Of course, those guys also lay up quite a few birch rounds to season in advance, since that particular fungus also leaves a lot of unusable rot in the heartwood if you let it get too far along.

After looking around a bit without any luck, I decided to use some birch 1x4 roughcut planks that I'd gotten for free since they were cupped, checked, twisted, and bent in various degrees. I went through about twenty or thirty feet of crummy planks to get enough good chunks to laminate into a square block about 14" across, a bit less than 4 inches deep. A trip to the bandsaw to make it into a rough circle and a few times through the planer on one side to glue on a backer plate block, and you've got something turnable. I'll leave out the part about it being a quarter inch too deep to fit into the cutout in the ways, but eventually I got it secured to the headstock and started making wood curls. I half expected it to explode when I fired up the lathe the first time, but that yellow wood glue is stronger than you'd expect if you get it clamped up tight and let it dry long enough.

In any case, this is how it turned out. Not bad for an amateur, and as a bonus I still have all my original digits.

Hey Sean, that's really nice looking. Great job.

Gap Bed Lathe ya say .... hummmm .... ... I've got one of those on a truck somewhere between here and Atlanta! haha.

Very nice looking bowl. If ya use it for salad ... you wouldn't have wanted all that ... fungii .... in there anyway. smile.



Gary

Sean,

That is nice. Some day I'm going to get a place of my own and I swear I'll have one of those for my fresh fruit.

Do you have access to a 24" planer at you shop?

Lon

Actually, I don't have a planer at all in my 'shop' at home. The sum total of my power woodworking equipment is a cheapo non-sliding chop saw, a 7.5" Skilsaw, a Sawsall, and a couple of hand drills. I think there might be a a hand plane in a box somewhere, if it survived the move.

What I do have is seasonal access to the local high school woodshop when they open it up in wintertime as part of the community education program. For about a hundred bucks a "semester" I gain access to all their equipment for about fives hours on Wednesday nights. They've got the huge planer, a table saw with a big outfeed table and a fairly crummy fence system, a couple bandsaws, joiner, an assortment of wood lathes with mismatched accessories, and lots and lots of sanders. For some reason, sanding seems to be a very popular activity at the high school shop. I guess some things never change.

Although it's a pain to have to put the projects away for a week at a time, having access to a lighted, heated shop that's NOT crammed with the usual detrius that accumulates in normal garages is a huge benefit in itself. At home, it's a major project just clearing space to work, and I have no heat in the garage at all. Sort of a drawback for wintertime in Alaska.

You mean, "NOT BAD FOR A PROFESSIONAL". That looks mighty classy.

My wife and i have a friend who has been taking wood shop classes at some college close to her and she has been in it for like 4 years. At least, she goes up to the college to make stuff and she is darned good. Her first project was a Judges Mallet and i swear that thing looked professionally made.

Wood working is a good skill to have in our hobby

Beautiful piece Rotor! Your care in the finish really shows.

Great Job!

Kent

Actually the finishing part was really easy, I just used "wipe-on" polyurethane. You just pour some on a rag and literally wipe it on; you can do a couple of coats in just an hour or so since it dries really fast. I think it's basically just regular old poly that's thinned out quite a bit, you could probably do the same thing with mineral spirits.

The hard part was sanding out all the tool marks, I think I probably spent at least four or five hours at that with different grits, a full "day" of shop class anyway. It's very tempting to move on to the finer grits when you're mostly done, but unless you get ALL the scratches out with the coarser grits first, you're wasting your time.

The biggest difference came when I asked a friend who's a real woodworker (hand-made shaker-style chairs, Italian computerized shapers, etc.) about how you handle the heat from the sanding, since I was burning my fingers. Once I got a set of leather gloves on (nice tight fitting ones) I finally got it finished without any further hopping around with my toasted fingertips in my mouth.