Tag: woodturning

Inside-Out Christmas Ornament

~ Sean Nolan

Since getting my lathe three years ago I’ve started a tradition of turning an ornament using the trunk of our family Christmas tree. Year one was a pretty but simple blobby thing. Year two was a bell, complete with a second little brass bell hanging inside. This year I wanted to try “inside-out” turning, a new technique I saw (of course) on the web. I quite like the way it came out, and the steps were interesting enough to warrant a quick post.

Christmas tree wood is pretty wet even after a month of sitting in the house, so I typically cut a few pieces and let them dry in the garage into the Fall at least. This is one of the hazards of being a collector of natural wood — my garage is packed so full of drying driftwood and winterfall that you can barely walk around in there.

Milling the blank

Anyways, step one was to mill out a rectangular blank just over 2×2” and long enough to give me plenty of room to work. It’s harder than you’d think to mill logs and branches into square lumber, because there’s no first straight edge to work from.

When the piece is small enough, my approach is to secure the piece to a straight board lengthwise with an edge sticking out, like the diagram here (looking end-on to the log). After getting a clean first cut I remove the screws, rotate the log so the flat part sits against the board, and do it again to end up with two flat edges in a right angle. At this point we’re golden and can just ride the existing straight edges to create square, parallel cuts. This all gets much harder when the piece doesn’t fit into my modest band saw, but that’s not an issue for a Christmas tree trunk, even a Grizwold-sized one.

First glue-up

I marked the blank end in four equal segments, adding notations so I could remember how they fit together. Then I cut the segments lengthwise on the table saw, and glued them back together with single ply of newspaper along the joints. This is a neat trick — after the first turning step we’ll have to break these glue joints apart. They have to be strong enough to hold firm during turning, but weak enough that they separate cleanly when we’re done. The layer of newspaper absorbs some of the wood glue and tears apart when we need it to.

It’s pretty important to do this glue-up accurately — the four pieces need to come together to a perfect point in the middle, or the edges won’t match up when you put them back together. You seriously can’t have too many clamps in a shop for this kind of job! Subtle hint: clamps make great stocking stuffers.

Turning the inside

Finally I was read to actually turn something! In this first step you’re hollowing out what will become the inside of the ornament, so it’s a bit of a mind-twist to visualize the right shape. I was trying for a pretty simple teardrop, so not too bad. The cuts can get pretty close to the middle, just leave enough meat that the piece isn’t unstable when reassembled.

Any finishing on the inside has to happen during this stage as well, because the surfaces will be pretty inaccessible once you flip them around. These ornaments are meant to help us remember past Christmas trees, so I like to leave at least some of the pine surface relatively natural. I sanded down to about 600 grit, did a bit of polishing with Yorkshire paste (love this stuff), and we were ready for the next step.

Second glue-up and turning the outside

OK, after breaking the sections apart with a wide chisel, I flipped them all around and re-glued them (no newspaper this time, it’s for keeps!) and clamped them up. Precision was even more important this time; I unfortunately had one edge slip and gap a bit — sawdust and glue and the final stain covered it up ok, but super-annoying nonetheless.

Back in the lathe, things went pretty well, shaping the outside to line up with the inside. I was a little worried there wouldn’t be enough space for the bottom taper I wanted, but as you can see below I just barely made it! (Another wood turning lesson — you never can have too much extra material.) I did this work at pretty high speed (about 1300rpm) to keep the open edges from catching and ripping; even so I had to be pretty light with the cuts to keep it all together.

Finishing, a near disaster, but then not

I really wanted a contrasting inside/outside for this piece, and thought a dark stain would look nice. Unfortunately, I chose walnut after looking at samples online — big, big mistake. Apparently “walnut” in this context means “clearly poop.” Such a bummer when things go south at the very last minute.

But it was OK. Took awhile, but I was able to sand off the ugly finish and redo it with my ever-trusty Unicorn Spit (check out their story, so awesome) and a few coats of spray enamel — a nice blue color that lets the grain come through in the sunlight. Woo hoo! The final result looks great on the Whidbey tree, and now I just have to figure out what to do next year. A fun tradition, although it might be a bit difficult to maintain if we follow through on the annual threat of a fake tree to save our allergies … we will see!

Every Mistake

~ Sean Nolan

I’ve been working on myself for fifty-four years; software for about forty; kids for almost thirty; and (as Jim says) sawdust for six or so. Whatever the domain, sometimes projects go great and sometimes they, well, don’t. But it’s hard for me to think of anything I’ve tried — even the worst of them — that didn’t have some useful lesson hiding in there. That’s pretty cool.

Case in point, this little pine bowl. It actually looks ok with a little distance and soft focus:

But if you zoom in, it’s a freaking disaster in pretty much every way. First of all, there’s a ton of “tearout,” which happens when the tool catches and rips the wood fibers instead of cutting cleanly. I still have pretty lousy sharpening skills, and between that and a preference for carbide scraping tools it’s something I’m always having to watch for. I ended up with a few really rough spots, especially on the inside of the piece — it’s so tempting to think you can sand these out, but that really only goes so far. Ah well.

Next, I didn’t dry the wood well enough for the orientation and shape I wanted to create. I thought I did, but clearly not. You can see in the picture that I included the pith, and that it runs horizontally through the piece. Which looks cool, but with those straight, thin walls it cracked less than an hour after bringing it in from the garage. The big one shown in the picture and then a hairline exactly on the opposite side. Whooooops!

When I first got my lathe I had no concept of how much wood moves as it dries, and how much time it can take to stabilize. Of course this isn’t the case when you buy kiln-dried stuff at the store, but most of my material comes off of the beach and it’s hard to know how long it’s been cut and/or in the water. The most reliable method is sealing the ends with a wax or glue and waiting a year or two for it to dry naturally (the wax helps the moisture evaporate more evenly), but the oven works “ok” in a pinch.

Anyways, I often reinforce blanks before turning them, using epoxy or CA glue or a wood glue / sawdust paste. And generally that’s actually a positive for the work — like the beautiful clear epoxy voids in this bowl, one of my favorites. But once something has been turned to final shape it’s a lot harder. My next mistake was doing that repair poorly. The plan was to block off the crack using metal tape and hot glue, pour in just enough epoxy to fill the crack, and then sand it flat. Which sort of worked, except (1) the tape leaked, so there’s staining around the repair, and (2) rather than being either clear or opaque, I put in just enough black pigment to make it kind of a muddy grey. Mmmmm.

The hits keep coming! I almost exclusively use oils and waxes to finish, because the whole point of what I make is to show off the great wood that floats up on the beach (if I want a hard coat I will use epoxy coats sometimes). But for this one I wanted to experiment with traditional shellac just to broaden my arsenal a bit. Sanding sealer is a pretty typical undercoat for shellac, and I was still hoping I could hide some of those tears, so I put on a couple of coats. All good, except that when I actually sanded the sealer I left a ton of marks that I didn’t notice before locking them in with the shellac coats. Awesome.

At least that was about it. Oh, except for the drips I left in the shellac, but at least I was able to buff those out with a little work.

Not my finest hour. And yet, I’ll still put this little guy up on the shelf and in the gallery. And be happy when I see it. And even post it here for everyone to see! Next time I’ll sharpen things up better, dry the wood a little more and be more patient with the sanding. All good things.

Bentwood Ring v0.8

~ Sean Nolan

A few weeks ago “bentwood rings” started showing up on my Pinterest feed amongst the usual fare of woodturning and off-grid power systems (that recommendation engine knows its business). I’d been thinking vaguely about wooden rings for awhile, so went down the Internet rabbit hole to see what was up. There’s a ton of good stuff on YouTube, but this step-by-step guide was my favorite.

Bonus shot of the silicon ring Lara got me !

Bentwood rings are made by wrapping a very thin bit of wood (think veneer or shavings) around a form, gluing the overlapping layers together with CA (aka “Krazy”) glue. This basically creates plywood, with the grain running in circles around the ring. A bit complicated, but much stronger than a ring cut from solid wood, which inevitably has narrow bits with perpendicular grain that snap easily. Of course, all that glue doesn’t hurt the stability either.  

Most online tutorials use purchased wood veneers, and you can get some great looking stuff that way. But one of the main reasons I love to build with wood is that I can know exactly where it comes from — material I’ve harvested myself, from a place that has meaning to me. So I chose the shavings method, starting with a branch from one of the beautiful maple trees in our Bellevue yard.

The end result isn’t an unqualified success — there are clear flaws in the finish and it’s a bit bulkier than I’d have liked. But it was a ton of fun to make, and with some practice I think I’ll be able to get it right. So I’m calling this first attempt “version 0.8” which leaves me room to take another shot. Lots of lessons to talk about!

Sourcing and forming the shavings

The first step was to secure the maple branch (green, about a foot and a half long and one inch in diameter) in my bench vise and use my new spokeshave to first flatten it out and then pull off some long curls. It’s important to keep these as even as possible so that they’ll wrap neatly — shaving is easy and fun, so take a bunch and then pick out the best. They should be thin but not translucent, and wider than the final ring will be, to account for splitting at the edges.

If your spokeshave starts to “bounce” or catch as you cut, try reversing direction — you always want to be cutting “downhill” so that you’re not bumping the blade into end grain. This is a really neat tool and just super-satisfying to use when it’s cutting cleanly.

Use medium-grit sandpaper (like 240) to smooth out any bumps or nicks in the shavings. Then sand a shallow bevel into each end so that they taper off to almost nothing. Both of these are to ensure that the layers wrap together as closely as possible to prevent crappy-looking glue pockets.

You’ll want to wrap the shavings against their natural curl — honestly I’m not sure that this matters, but it makes the smoother side of the cut face out and that’s how “they” say to do it. Your shavings may be flexible enough to just wrap them as-is, but I chose to soak mine for about fifteen seconds in hot water, loosely roll them in a loop against the curl, tape them in that position and leave them overnight. This reversed the curl so that the actual glue-up took slightly less manual dexterity.

Making the blank

Next up was wrapping and gluing the shavings into the ring blank. Find something round that is just slightly smaller than the diameter of the ring you want to make (sanding to fit is easier than trying to build up layers of finish inside) — I used a socket from my toolbox wrapped with Teflon plumbing tape. The Teflon worked OK, but next time I’m going to try plain old Scotch tape which seems like it’ll absorb a bit less of the glue. I’m also going to try a stepped ring mandrel instead of the socket, just to take some guesswork out of the sizing.

I used Starbond thin CA glue for this step, which seems to be pretty standard. First, wrap the shaving once as tightly as possible around the form. Add plenty of glue to about a quarter inch bit of shaving and then press and hold until it sets, about ten seconds or so. Soak the next quarter inch with glue, press that bit down, and keep repeating this until you’ve wrapped around the from three or four times (or a little bigger, whatever you like). Don’t be stingy with the glue, you really want it to get into the wood fibers.

Getting the wrap finished takes a bit of finger gymnastics and despite using vinyl gloves I ended up with glue all over my hands — ah the price of art. Do your best to keep the wrap even and flat so that there are no visible pockets of glue. Secure the wrap with some masking tape, drip in a little more glue from each edge, and let it cure fully — overnight should be more than enough.

Shaping and Sanding

sanded but unfinished

This part was the most fun for me. After twisting the ring off of the form, I used a thin pull saw to cut off the rough edges and my spindle/belt sander to clean up the inside and outside of the ring. I found a dowel to hold the ring securely on the lathe and then shaped the ring to what I thought was a good profile (turns out it was a little too bulky, oh well).

From there it was all about sanding through the grits — 120, 240, 400, 600, 800, 1000. I did the same on the inside of the ring by hand, which wasn’t nearly as mind-numbing as you’d expect. The surface area is small so you only need a couple of minutes with each one; I use “one pop song per grit” as my rule of thumb.

I was really pleased with the ring at this point. A little large, but the grain was quite pretty and the ring felt strong and smooth.

Finishing it Up

The last step was to put a glossy protective finish on the ring. Turns out that the most common finish is … wait for it … even more CA glue. Because I was worried about the ring sticking in this step, I bought a one-inch HDPE rod and shaped it to fit the ring (CA glue doesn’t stick well to HDPE). In the end, though, it was pretty easy to keep the glue from dripping off of the ring, so that probably wasn’t necessary.

The technique here was to get the ring rotating on the lathe at its slowest setting (about 45 rpm), apply a drop of medium-thickness CA glue to the ring, and use a toothpick to spread it over the surface, making sure to reach the edges. Let that drop cure, and repeat until you like the look of the finish. The same approach works for the inside of the ring, but since I didn’t have an easy way to lathe-mount the ring with the inside exposed, I just rotated it in my left hand while applying and spreading glue with the right. It worked just fine.

But here’s where I really messed up. First, and I could really kick myself for this, a tiny bit of black HDPE dust was left on the mounting rod after shaping it, and a couple flakes got stuck in my finish. Tiny flakes, but they look like bits of dirt — infuriating. The bigger issue is that I added too much finish with each step (2-3 drops rather than 1), and didn’t let it cure sufficiently between coats. The end result is quite a bit of clouding and a few bubbles deep in the finish. Bummer.

Forging ahead, I re-sanded the ring through the same grits plus 2000 and 3000 at the end, then buffed it out with a plastic polish and buffing wheel. The surface is beautiful, glassy and strong, but the imperfections underneath are still quite apparent. Ah well, that’s why it’s version 0.8.

Next time will be better! I took some red alder shavings from a fallen tree at the Whidbey beach and will have another go in the next week or two (and will get some better in-progress pictures). There are some great advanced techniques to try as well — adding inlays, combining different types of veneer, and so on. There is always something new to learn and try. Hope you’ll give it a shot, and please let me know if you do.