Saturday, December 31, 2011

More projects!

Just wanted to post up a couple new things I turned out this morning. Two mini-wands and a big wand. The minis are alder scrap I had in the shop and the full-size was a piece of poplar.

The minis are really fun to make, and they always come out looking pretty cute, I think. I'll still have to put a coat of poly on these, but they're already looking pretty neat.

This is the full-sized poplar wand. It has a few dings in it, so it would go as a second if someone wanted to buy it. I was paying more attention to the tools than the wood and caught an edge once or twice. Still a pretty wand, though.

I like this design a lot. Especially the handle and pommel (well what would you call it?) but I'm not super happy with the transition bead. If I do another similar design, I'll rework that for sure.

Friday, December 23, 2011

New lathe and more garage space

So a couple posts back I mentioned that I met a fellow wood turner at the Hogwarts party. We talked about turning and general woodworking all night and he happened to have a full-size lathe in his parents' garage across the street that he was looking to sell. It's a fantastic lathe and it was a great price, so I couldn't say no. I also decided shortly before that to keep my side of the garage as a dedicated shop/home gym. So with that, and the opportunity to buy a full-size lathe and really increase my turning capabilities, we enter the next chapter of my turning experience, I guess.

Also, my dad and I built a ceiling rack for all my spare lumber and sheet stock and moved everything up there on Sunday. Here are some pictures so you can see what I mean.

We used our non-patented-but-probably-should-be ceiling suspension system. I actually did hang off of this one as a test and it's rock solid.

We got a base of sheet stock up there and then lumber on the left and remaining sheet stock on the right. The right side is wide enough to fit full 4'x8' sheet stock, which is obviously cool.

This is an improvement, for sure. The more stuff we get out of the garage and off the floor, the better.

There's the bench and board. Exciting stuff! Most exciting is that everything is still organized and put away where it belongs.

Who's this little guy, though? He looks new.

There it is. Shiny new full-size lathe. I can turn up to 12"x36" pieces on this beast. It has a variable speed control, too, which means less stopping and starting for me. I'll do a full review in a little bit. I think I'm also going to have to re-organize the garage a little more to make more room. This is a pretty tight fit right now, and that's not cool. I need room to stretch out when I'm turning.

Thanks for reading!

WANDS. It's all caps because there are so many.

Okay, here goes. A rundown on all the wands I've made so far. I'm going by memory here and I'm no Ollivander just yet, so bear with me if there's something I've forgotten.

#1 - Maple with English Chestnut stain and no clear coat, ~10" long

#2 - Poplar with satin polyurethane finish and no stain, ~12"


#3 - Maple, semi-gloss polyurethane and no stain, ~12"

#4 - Alder with satin lacquer and no stain, ~12"

#5 - Alder with dark walnut stain and satin polyurethane, ~12"

#6 - Maple with satin polyurethane and no stain, ~12"

#7 - Red oak with english chestnut stain and semi-gloss polyurethane, ~12"

#8 - Alder with english chestnut stain and no polyurethane, ~12"

#9 - Unknown wood (maybe rosewood?) with semi-gloss polyurethane and no stain, ~12"

#10 - Mahogany with semi-gloss polyurethane and no stain, ~13"

#11 - Red oak with red mahogany stain and satin polyurethane, ~12"

#12 - Cedar with red mahogany stain and satin polyurethane, ~10"

#13 - Maple, dark walnut stain and satin polyurethane, ~16"

#14 - White oak with golden oak stain and satin polyurethane, ~10"

#15 - Lignum vitae without any stain or clear coat, ~13"

So there you have it. That's everything that popped out of my brain and onto the lathe in the past few weeks. Hopefully that gives you some idea of the capabilities and design options. I've got plenty more, actually, and new tools and more practice are opening things up even more, but that's going to have to be another post. Thanks for reading and let me know if you have any questions.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Video!

The other day, I took a video of me making a wand, more or less from start to finish. Ish. As close as I could manage before the memory card on my camera pooped out, anyway.

So here's part 1:


And here's part 2, which is all the sanding:


So there you go. Everything you ever wanted to know about using the lathe in all the wrong ways.

The Hogwarty party for which I was making so many wands was a roaring success and I had a ton of fun. Everyone seemed to enjoy the wands and all, which was cool. Here are some pictures of how the basement turned out:

That's the faux fireplace we built around the TV down there. I think it turned out very well.

This is the quidditch set we put together. The broom is one of mine and the little bat is one of mine as well. They did such a great job on the chest!

These are all the wands I'd made as party favors. People really seemed to like them, which was cool. Even got me to talking with a guy whose parents live across the street from the Webbers. He's actually going to school to learn fine woodworking and just finished a couple semesters of turning classes. Awesome stuff!

The bookshelves were one of the easier things we did, but i think they turned out very well. Just wallpaper with some wooden frames around them.

Okay, that's it for now. More pics and everything later on!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Lignum Vitae

So last night I went back to Woodcraft to pick up some more wood for turning. While there, I happened to see a 2x2x24 piece of wood that looked very much like the green wood I turned the other night. It was labeled "Lignum Vitae". It was less expensive than I thought it would be, but still not cheap. I found another piece of the wood that looked exactly like what I had gotten before and took it up to the front and asked the guy what it was. He confirmed that it was indeed lignum vitae. So apparently, that's what I was turning.

The cool part about this is that lignum vitae is kind of an amazing wood. Very tough, strong, and long-lasting stuff. It's naturally very oily so it doesn't dry out or rot, and it was used for important pieces on ships. It was basically the forerunner to modern plastics. Anyway, it's all in the Wikipedia article. The natural qualities of this wood made it incredibly handy stuff. It doesn't need a protective coating, since it's just so naturally tough.

Here's where it gets even cooler. The wood also has sort of mythical history. Merlin's wand was supposed to have been made of lignum vitae. The name means "wood of life" which is also awesome.

So anyway, there you go. The wand I made is even cooler than I thought. I ended up putting some poly on it, but I didn't need to. The stuff is sort of bullet proof, sounds like. So anyway, I'm going to buy more of it and it will become a standard wood in my repertoire. I'll just have to figure out a better way to sand it so it isn't so annoying. I'll keep you posted, of course.

Oh, and here's a full picture of the wand I made, all sanded up and off the lathe, with the ends finished and everything.





Pretty, no? I'm going to work on my pictures, specifically the lighting and background, but I'm pleased with how this one turned out.

Thanks for reading!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

The Wandering Wand...er...er. Shut up.

So I've been making wands. Loads of the little buggers. I've been taking pictures when I remember, but you know how I am. Anyway, I figured I'd run through a couple lathe-related things with you all. Hopefully you don't mind.

Remember these?





Good. That's where we start.

Next, look at this:
That's a bit of wood. A little over a foot long, squarish, maybe 3/4" x 3/4". I ripped a 1x2 down the middle to get it, so there you go.

This is a handy tool for finding the center of anything square or round. Awesome piece of equipment, this. Otherwise finding the center takes for freaking ever.


This is my new spur center. Isn't it pretty? It's a much smaller diameter than the last one, and the spike in the middle is spring loaded, so you damage less wood when mounting it into the lathe. That's awesome. This is what has allowed me to start turning things that are smaller than 1.25" in diameter. That's also awesome. It means wands come out faster, everything is cheaper, etc. All good things. So anyway, you mark the center on each end of the wood, put the spikes on the centers and crank it all down. Once you have a lathe you'll figure that out, and I can't really do the process justice in text.


See the little teeth biting into the wood? That's what we want.

Now, you have to knock the corners off to turn your squarish piece of wood into a roundish piece of wood, right? 

This is how it starts. You basically knock the corners off. I usually use my roughing gouge for this.


Then, if you're me, you forget to take pictures for a while. You finish off the smoothing with the gouge or maybe a large skew chisel, then you get to work shaping. This is where we pick back up.

I never have a design in mind when I start these. I let the wood guide me in some cases (cool grain patterns get rounded, swoopy designs) and in others I make a wand trying to make a certain shape or something for practice.


For this one, I wanted to practice rolling beads. So I made a bead and then ran a groove down the middle. Then I made kind of a ring thingy there. You know. Professional-like.


There's the whole thing. Still a very simple design. I had made a few wands that got so complicated they all started looking alike, so I wanted to work on making simple designs that still looked good.


These are the two simpler designs I made from pieces of red oak. It chips out a bit, but I was using my old tools so that may not be the case anymore. I'm hoping to get delicate enough with my touch and to get my tools sharp enough that I can do complex designs even on chippy woods. Until then, some of them will look a little more "well-loved" than others. We'll just say they're Weasly hand-me-downs.


Here's a shot of almost all the wands I've made so far. I'm working on getting them all stained and coated with polyurethane now.


I don't know if you remember, but I picked up a piece of green wood from woodcraft. I don't mean green wood in that it was still wet (the normal meaning of "green" in woodworking). I mean that it was verde. I didn't quite know what to do with it, and I was hesitant to mess with any of those woods until I got some more experience under my belt.. But last night, I decided to chuck it up and go nuts.


Click on this one to blow it up. The grain in this wood is crazy. It looks...jungly? I have no idea how to describe it, but it's gorgeous and intricate. The wood is also a giant pain in my ass to work with. I'm really glad I waited to try it because I would've been completely lost otherwise.


With wood that has a strong grain like this, I like to do multiple rounded parts, since they really show off the grain. I've also been working on this particular "swoop" in my handles, and it suited this wand pretty well.


That's more or less the final shape. Sanding this beast took for-freaking-ever, as the wood is simultaneously sort of hard and sort of soft. Bizarre stuff.

This is how it looks sanded to 400-grit but before polyurethane. I just love the complexity of the grain.


This is what it looks like at my house when wands are drying. Eventually, I'm sure I'll come up with a better solution. Until then, it's bungee cords and plastic clamps. I also had an idea for how to keep track of my finishes. I wrote the same of the finish I used on a piece of paper and clipped it to the bungee cord so I would remember which stains/protectants I'd used and didn't mix them up. I didn't have too many mix-ups, but now that I'm getting into more expensive materials and more complex designs, I really want to minimize the potential for error.

So there you go. I'm going to set up a cool light box and a black velvet backdrop to take proper pictures of these things, since I'm going to start an Etsy store before too long. Wish me luck!

Whatcha got here that's worth living for?

...True....lathe...


At least I think that's how it went. Anyway. I now have a lathe and I've been going nuts with it. I've made half a dozen wands on it, with a few different sets of tools. I've learned a ton, and I'm going to help you all with some of the basics, as much as I can.

Okay, here's what I have:
That's a lathe and a small bench sander. Those are both very handy. A table saw and a miter saw are also handy for splitting 1x2s of various lengths into viable spindle material. You can probably get away without those, though. You'll just have to be a bit more picky about your raw materials.

This is wood. Trees make this out of dirt and time. You'll need some of this. I got these pieces at Woodcraft. They're all various species, and you can see just how very different they are. I've also gotten more than a little wood from Lowe's in the form of dowels or 1x stock. 1x2 is easy to find in various non-pine woods. The one by me has red oak, maple, alder and another one that starts with P that I don't like much. Poplar? Yeah, that's it. Poplar. I may give it a try sometime, but I'm prejudiced against it. It just looks sickly to me for some reason. Anyway, you can start with any of those, but it'll be easiest to start with what you can get in dowel format. It's already round so you don't need to rip it or anything. You can also get it in 3/4" diameter, which I think is a pretty good size for wands. I've started a couple from much larger than that and it just takes a lot of time to get them down to size. Unless you have a specific design that requires a much larger diameter for part of it, start small and stay small.

Now, a word on tool quality and value. I bought these chisels from Harbor Freight, the same place I got my lathe. I later went back and bought these chisels. I cannot adequately express to you how much better the second set is than the first. Yes, they cost twice as much. They are worth every penny. By extension, couldn't you also say that maybe these chisels would also be much nicer and easier to work with, and would therefore be worth every penny? This is what I call the point of diminishing returns. For a novice, the difference between crap tools and good tools will be noticeable and will make a difference in how easily you can learn the new skill. The difference between good tools and great tools will probably not be noticeable. Also, the increase in cost from crap to good is generally pretty small. The increase from good to great can be astronomical. Eventually, I will want to upgrade my chisels, I'm sure of it. Right now, they aren't holding me back at all, so I'm plenty happy with them. The first set was holding me back in a big way. I knew what I wanted to do, I knew how to do it, I just couldn't make the tools work for me. It was intensely frustrating. That said, I spent very little on my lathe, relatively speaking. I'm still exceptionally pleased with it. I could easily have spent twice as much without a significant increase in functionality. So I think the lathe itself was a good purchase and the original set of tools was a bad purchase. How do you know this stuff when you're just learning? You don't, unfortunately. You can read some books on it, ask a friend who knows better, see if the guy at the store can help, but you're really just abdicating responsibility. You won't know what is important to you in a tool and how much certain features are worth until you get the tools in front of you and try to live without those features or come to realize that you spent way more than you had to on stuff you don't use. It's just the nature of the beast, unfortunately. I'm sure there's some stuff that I haven't tried to do with my lathe yet that it can't do and that someone else would think is essential. They would think this was a bad purchase and would advise against it. And for what they're doing, they might be right. Frustrating, huh?

Anyway, enough on that. Suffice it to say, I have most of the tools I need to do what I want to do now. I have a few wand-specific needs that some of these tools can assist with. First, let me break down some of the different types of "centers" so you know what I'm talking about.

Headstock center - This is your driving center. It's putting the force into your piece to turn it.
Tailstock center - This one is either stationary or spins freely. There's no power to it, though.

Spur center - This is a drive center that has a central point with some teeth arrayed around it. The center point is your guide so you can make sure you put the stock onto it the right way, and the teeth bite into the surface of the wood and transfer the force from the motor to the piece itself. It's a pretty simple way to go, but it has a few limitations. For one, you're digging holes in the bottom of your piece. For one, your piece has to have a surface large enough for the teeth to bite into, and you have to be okay with damaging that surface. You also have to have a tailstock center with one of these, preferably a live center. The piece is held between the two points. This obviously won't work for bowls or plates or anything where you don't have a place for the tailstock to go. So these are great for spindles, but weak for most anything else. Get one small enough that the teeth will be able to gain purchase on the stock you're turning. The spur center that came with my lathe was far too large for what I was turning. I got the one from Amazon and it is much better. Not too expensive, either.

Jacobs Chuck or Drill Chuck - This one can work for holding wands if your stock is very small, or it can be used to hold actual drill bits. Sometimes, you'll want to drill directly into the center of a piece. Using one of these in your tailstock will let you drill a hole directly through the center of your piece. That can also be handy.

3, 4, or 6-Jaw Chuck - This is one that I don't have yet, but would really like to get. It's extremely versatile. You can use it inside the rim of a bowl (expand the jaws outward to get an internal grip) or you can use it to grab a dowel (tighten the jaws inward to get an external grip on a piece). These are very popular with people turning bowls and plates and such, since they can grab onto the piece without using the tailstock. A drive center like this one gives you a lot of freedom.

Screw Chuck -  This is a chuck that has a screw on the end. It's sort of like a spur center, except the screw holds the piece to the headstock, so you don't need the tailstock to keep it in place.I tried mine once and didn't have great luck with it. I'll try it again, though.

No Chuck - This is also an option for wand turning. Your lathe will most likely have a taper inside the headstock. The tapered end you've seen on the other centers just goes in there and gets a friction fit. You can taper the end of a dowel and tap it in there instead, and get a nice grip without any center or chuck or anything. I've done that once, and may do it again, depending on what I'm doing. The upside is that you can do without the tailstock, in theory. In practice, I wouldn't. It's also nice if you want to turn a wand and don't have the appropriate chuck or center to get a good grip on it.

I'm sure I've missed some, but now I'm bored of talking about that stuff. I want to talk about wands.

In the lathe world, wands are called "spindles" and what I've been doing is called "spindle turning" as opposed to "face turning" which is what you do with plates and bowls and such. Essentially, if your piece is long and thin and you don't decorate or hollow out anything on the ends, you're doing spindle turning. Some tools and techniques are more suited to this kind of turning, so that's mostly what I'm using. I get the feeling that spindle turning is looked down on by most wood turners, since hardly any of them actually do much of it in the videos I've watched and the books I've read. part of it is that there just isn't that much to do with spindles once they're done. You can make chair parts, and spoons or tool handles or something, but you're not in "cups, bowls, plates" territory, which is what a lot of turning seems to focus on.

Anyway, enough jibba-jabba. Let's get to pictures.

This is my first wand on the lathe. I call it the "Honey dipper" because it sort of looks like a bear. This was the wand I made before i realized that I could sand on the lathe and for some reason, I decided to make a buttload of tiny grooves on it. Those suck to sand by hand. Sanding them on the lathe would've been a snap. You live and learn, right? This one is made of oak, cut from a 1 1/4" x 6' oak staff I've had since high school. I've never done anything with it, so I figured that cutting it up and making it into pretty things was the best it could hope for. You'll notice that this is pretty chunky still. I started big and ended big, which is almost always how it goes. It's far too tempting to leave some giant bulbous knob on the wand when you start with big stock.

Again, the honey dipper, then a small cedar wand in the middle and another wand cut from a piece of the oak dowel on the right. It's more like a freakin' bat than a wand, though.


Anyway, that's probably good enough for one post. Please let me know if you have any questions. I'm still learning, but I know a little more now than when I started, so I guess that's something. Thanks for reading!