I'm Still Here!

Well, I let another three months go by without a word.  I need a few more hours in the day.

Still turning wood in all the spare time I can find.  I've been concentrating on segmented pieces - but rather than the strict, measured pieces I've been seeing, I like curves and free-form designs.  Even my pieces that appear to be square are deliberately cut at slight to radical angles and of different sizes.  Guess I've finally embraced my inability to draw a straight line.

I've made a couple of special pieces for special people.  The first was for a classmate from way back in the dark ages who asked me to make him something surprising.  I put together a questionnaire to gather information about his background and interests that gave me ideas about what woods and metals to use.  Included some woods from (or native to) his ancestral countries, some wood a friend brought me from our old high school, and put together something that surprised me, too!

It's so different from all the pens I've seen, I was a little scared about sending it off.  I took it along with a few other pens to my first meeting with the Inland Woodturners group (more on that later) and a couple of pen turners there gave it high praise - so I put it in the mail and crossed my fingers.

Turned out Wade loved the pen.  Phew!  I think that may be the last time I make something by request.  It's just too stressful.  Much more fun to make pens that interest me and if someone likes, them, all the better.

Next I made a special pen for my cousin Billy, who was doing a reading and signing event for his latest book, Remembering Gordon Street.  I love this book because he included little bits and pieces about my parents and quite a bit about my grandparents.  Much of it is set in the family home where I now live, the Grove House.  Coincidentally, the last of the original orange trees that he talks about has been slowly dying and we removed some of the branches a couple of months ago.  Of course, I added it to my wood stash, so when I decided to make his pen, it seemed only natural to include some of this wood.

 

 This gave me a chance to use my new stabilizing chamber.  I ordered this several months ago from Turntex Woodworks, but his products are so popular he has had a backlog of orders.  It was definitely worth waiting for - very well constructed and worked perfectly on the very first try.

Mad scientist time!  The bubbles you see here are the air being sucked out of the wood.  When I release the vacuum, the liquid resin in the chamber will get sucked into the wood.  I'll cure it in a toaster oven (never to be used for food after this) for a few hours and have some really stable wood to turn.

Billy's pen on the lathe.  The cream-colored piece is the orange wood.

Two sides of the same pen:  the brown is walnut, the red is bloodwood.  The bottom half of the pen is the orange wood.

 I also finished a pen I've been working on for several weeks and this is my favorite piece yet.  I started with four different pieces of wood, glued together into one block.  Then I cut the block into thin slices, rotated each slice an eighth of a turn beyond the previous slice, and glued them all back together.  Drilled a hole in the center, inserted a brass tube and turned it.

And here's the result.  I absolutely love this pen!

In the meantime, I took a bandsaw class at the Woodcraft store in Fountain Valley.  Learned how to change the blade on my bandsaw, maintain, and troubleshoot it.  Learned for sure what I already pretty much knew - the little bandsaw I already have doesn't have the oomph to make a controlled cut - especially a straight one.  So I think there's a big bandsaw somewhere in my future.

We cut and glued pieces for two small cutting boards.  Funny thing was there were three men in the class with me.  I let all three of them go first - each one swaggered up to the saw then slunk away when they couldn't cut on the lines.  Got a little bit of the "let's see what the little lady can do" treatment when it was my turn.  Turns out that cutting on a properly adjusted saw is just like guiding fabric through a sewing machine.  So I pretty much zipped through my turn.  Pretty funny seeing the smirks turn to disbelief.

These are the pieces I made...  we didn't have time to finish during the class, so we were sent home with instructions to stack and re-cut these crosswise, swap the pieces, and reglue to create two finished pieces with a wavy checkerboard pattern.  Doesn't really appeal to me, so I may cut them into pen or spindle blanks.

One of the best parts of the class was using the drum sander.  To get good joins in segmenting, your surfaces have to fit well - and this tool is recommended as essential for doing flat segments.  While surfing Craigslist a few days later for that big bandsaw, I spotted a drum sander at a ridiculously low price.  24 hours and a quick drive to Yucaipa later, I became the proud owner of a really nice Grizzly baby drum sander, along with a supply of sandpaper and an extra motor (drive shafts on these are designed to snap when they get jammed.

As I mentioned earlier, I went to my first meeting of the Inland Woodturners.  That month's demo was on turning natural-edged bowls.  Although I haven't been interested in bowls, I may have to re-think this.  There were quite a few show-and-tell pieces, including some marvelous segmented pieces.  I took along a portfolio of my pens and a friend told me I should put them in the show and tell.  He neglected to tell me I would have to go up front to talk about my work.  Yuck.  But I got a lot of compliments and some great advice. 

My second meeting featured a demo on inlaid pens. This is a technique I've tried without much success but I learned enough from this demo that I'm ready to try again.  If I can find the patience to place the inlay materials one tiny piece at a time.

I have more to tell about but this is long enough for one post, so I'm going to close with photos of  some of my recent work and works in progress.

Cutting a pair of blanks on the scroll saw.  I'll swap half of each piece for a pair of two-color pens.

First cuts on future segmented pens.  These will be sandwiched with contrasting veneer to make single-color pens with curvy lines through them.

Glue-ups clamped and drying.  A girl can never have enough clamps!

A quartet of pens made of olive wood from Bethlehem.  One of my favorite woods.

Free-Form Segments

Still Turning

It's been a very busy couple of months since I last blogged.  I've become totally obsessed with woodturning.  To the point that my dad's shop is becoming a full-fledged woodshop.

Katie and I took a pen class at Rockler and came home with two more (I think) gorgeous pens each.  I also took a class on grinding gouges so I can sharpen my own tools - came home from that with a new slow-speed grinder and Wolverine jigs.

And it hasn't been enough to just turn ready-made blanks into pens.  No...  I have to learn to laminate my own blanks and make other things.  I loaded up on pen and accessory kits from PSI and a box-'o-blanks and was on my way.  Turns out that the b-o-b was a really good choice - it came with photos of the woods so I could identify each piece once it was turned and the woods included are all beautiful so far.

Resurrected my scroll saw that has been sitting unused for a couple of decades, and put it to work.  A sheet of veneer, big bottle of wood glue, and I'm making all kinds of laminated blanks.  This is a perfect craft for the packrat in me that can't throw anything away.  Scrap of wood too small to make anything?  No problem - just glue it to another scrap and presto!  And reading some of the forums, I see that people are even saving sawdust and shavings to include in casting resin.   My casting molds are in the mail as we speak.

I love, love, love what I've been doing.  I'm a little bit frustrated by the ever-growing need to have the right equipment for the right job and my own lack of knowledge about tools in general.  And had one major meltdown over drilling issues that resulted in me raising my voice (yes, I did!) and actually throwing a problem blank on the ground.  It was already cracked so at least I'm not living with that guilt.  And my rage lasted long enough for a trip to the hardware store to get a real drill press.

So here are a few of the things I've been making:

This is the idea that started me in this new direction.  I wanted to make some tools for my fiber arts - nostepinnes, shawl pins, a dealie for controlling yarn at the spinning wheel orifice, latch hooks - I have loads of ideas I want to try.  This one is a latch hook made with mystery wood.  A very simple profile and originally somewhat visually boring, so I added three lines with burning wires.

This tool is a bracelet helper.  If you were a teen in the sixties or seventies you probably think this is something else, but you would be wrong!   The clip on this gadget holds one end of your bracelet so you can use your free hand to clasp the other end.  This is made with Honduran Rosewood.

This next gadget is made from a piece of spalted curly maple.  The first photo shows the whole thing assembled.  The gold bit pulls out of the wood and, surprise!  it's a seam ripper.  The handle is designed to fit back in the wood, so you have a tiny point on the ripper to fit in tight places, but a substantial handle to hold.

Next is a perfume pen.  Another blank from the b-o-b, this is Yucatan rosewood.  A built-in container holds a piece of very porous material.  You fill it with perfume by dipping the wick that protrudes from the barrel into the perfume of your choice.  For those whose spinning wheels have easily accessed oiling spots, this might be a fun way to carry their machine oil.






 A twist pen (uses Cross pen style refills) in black palm.  I've noticed I tend to make the lower parts of my pens especially bulbous because I'm more comfortable with a substantial pen.  Everyone who has picked up this one has remarked on how good the size feels.

This is another twist pen made of bocote.  I chose to make this one without a pocket clip.

 

And this is a work in progress.  Made from a 2x12 piece of cherry, this is a nostepinne.  Look it up!  It's a little on the heavy side, so it should be used by someone who needs a really substantial tool.  Or wants something lovely that can double as a self-defense device.  I need to cut off the waste wood at the bottom and finish the ends, but couldn't resist including it in today's post.  I have a whole line of nostepinnes in different sizes and weights in production right now.

Now, on to my favorites to make and to look at so far - the laminated woods.  I had an aha moment last week...  Years ago, when I was living with my beloved dad (who could do ANYTHING), I often went out to his shop and found a piece of my good kitchenware being used to soak old oily Model A parts.  Well,  I found myself needing to soak a piece of veneer in water and automatically made a beeline for the kitchen, where I grabbed a loaf pan.  Later realized that I had just done what used to drive me crazy.  Except that I can and did return the pan to the kitchen afterward.  Don't think I could have done the same when my big stockpot was used to soak transmission parts.   Anyway, I guess I am now channeling Dad when I work in his shop (now my shop, but in my heart it will always be Dad's).  Maybe I'll get lucky and channel some of his talent and ingenuity.

 

This pen was made from my first laminated blank, using bocote, maple veneer, and bloodwood.  The veneer was pretty brittle, but a good soaking in warm water softened it enough to fit the curves in the two wood pieces.  I loved how the curves in the bocote nearly followed the curves I cut on this side of the pen.

For my next laminating project, I wanted much more contrast in colors, so I chose some blanks in bloodwood and yellowheart. Again, using maple veneer between each piece of wood.

First, I made a piece with more curves than the bocote/bloodwood pen.

Another surprise... this is a secret compartment keyring.  Just the perfect size to hold some toothpicks, a couple of aspirin, or maybe some mad money.  As a fiber arts person, though, my immediate thought when I saw this was "needle holder!"

My favorite pen to date.  I cut random blocks of each wood and simply glued them together in alternating colors.  I intended for the stripes to be a little more off-kilter, but held back when cutting because I thought I was getting carried away and would have problems clamping the pieces together.  Will trust my instincts next time.  But I still love how this turned out.

I was actually planning to keep this pen for myself, but it's too big to be comfortable in my hand.  Darn it!  It will have to wait for the right person to claim it.

Finally, here's a little stylus for a smartphone or tablet.  The little black thingy fits into a headphone jack when you're not using it so it won't get lost.  This is made from the same blank as the pen, but I cut it in half lengthwise and offset the pieces to make it far less uniform. 












So what's next?  Well, the nostepinnes are waiting to be finished.  Lined up in my shop, I have about a dozen pen kits glued up and waiting to be turned.  And a few surprises in the wings.  Not to mention the UPS truck.  Plus an advanced penmaking class at Rockler next month. And a bandsaw class at Woodcraft in December.