Planting mushrooms

WoodturningWoodworking

So the mushrooms turned from that branch from Fernhill were finished off; I cut the tenons off the two I turned in the chuck, drilled a mortice and glued in a piece of dowel:

And then Claire, Calum, Sonic and myself wandered up to Fernhill to plant them.

…and then I looted more wood.

Slightly larger this, but less circular. Not sure what I’ll make from it. More mushrooms I think, and maybe I can do a little birdbath…… Read the rest

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First bowl!

WoodturningWoodworking

So the woodturning course I was taking was cancelled because of Covid19 before we got to the bowl turning part of the course. But I had a large variety sack of bowl blanks arrive from homeofwood.co.uk at the start of lockdown, and I’ve been wanting to try bowl turning for a while, so I read about a dozen books on bowlturning (like The Practical Woodturner and others), bingewatched about thirty hours of youtube intruction from a dozen different turners, set the pucker factor to maximum and picked out the smallest minature blank I had…

That’s a three-inch blank on a three-inch faceplate 😀 But we can still do more overkill…

Tailstock support on a three inch blank 😀 Well, first bowl, might as well do belt and braces. So I turned the tenon (and it didn’t look too bad I thought), then I took off the faceplate, chucked the blank up, realised I’d skipped a step, put the faceplate back on and turned the outside of the bowl.… Read the rest

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Fixing Mushrooms

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WoodturningWoodworking

So after the last exploding mushroom, I tried turning the last two chunks of log into their mushrooms. And both times, it was looking soooo nice…

And then on almost the last finishing cut with the spindle or bowl gouge on the underneath of the cap, it caught and half the cap snapped right off, hitting me in the faceshield.

Well, maybe I had more hollowing out to do 😀
But I figured since these are going outdoors in the woods for the hedgehogs, maybe I can live with a rustic look, so I experimented by using some titebond to glue the pieces back together…

And after a day to let the glue cure (and no, I couldn’t get clamping so these were just rub joints), I put them back on the lathe at the lowest setting just for sanding and finishing.… Read the rest

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