ex-Xmas Tree Xmas Tree Decorations

ResinWoodturningWoodworking

So a few years ago, some woodworkers on a podcast made an April Fool’s joke about how they always picked the same species of xmas tree so that they could mill it up for lumber after the holidays and make a chest of drawers out of them. Which was funny, until another woodworker went and actually did it (with small boxes not a chest of drawers, because there’s a lot of timber in a chest of drawers):

And this was important because until this point, the several xmas tree trunks in the back yard were just there because I had been too lazy to make a second trip to the recycling yard with them. See, after the holidays I take our now-long-dead-and-drying tree into the back garden and hack off all the branches with a hatchet and bag up the branches and the two kilograms of needles that have fallen off them on the ten-yard trip from living room to back garden.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in No Comments

Cheating

WoodturningWoodworking

I’m progressively increasing the size of the blanks I’m trying on the lathe, rather than jumping straight into a 12×3″ or 10×5″ blank which would be up near the top end of what I think you can safely do on my minilathe. This was a spalted beech blank about 8″ in diameter and 2½” thick. Small by most people’s standards I’d say, but give me time 😀

The blank did come sealed btw, using parrafin I think, but I had one miniature blank check badly on me so I kindof went on a paint-all-the-endgrain rampage 😀

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing…

Since this was another step up in size I kept the shape nice and simple and focussed on not getting a catch and flinging the bowl off the wall and into my face.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 2 Comments

Centerline finding aid prototype

GeneralWoodturningWoodworking

So I had an idea and I’ve not seen this around for sale anywhere so I figured I’d build it.
When learning to turn, we keep getting told to set the height of the tool rest so that the cutter is along the centerline of the bowl.

I mean, after a few you can kinda get the hang of it and just set it by eye six times until you get it right and I’m told that after a few years you can drop that down to only setting it by eye two or three times to get it right 😀 But my lathe has morse taper 2 fittings in both the spindle and the tailstock, and you can get blank MT2 arbours for various other things (it’s not just lathes that use MT2 fittings) so I bought a blank MT2 arbour and some other bits and pieces and made this.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 3 Comments