Well, I finally got back out to the shop after being “on tour” recently and I got a chance to do a bit of woodturning. I chose a piece of Lacewood that I had sitting here on the bench for the past little while. Perhaps you remember back about a mouth ago when I had a small piece of Lacewood and turned a candle holder as a ‘practice’ piece before turning a bowl out of this wood.

The bowl is 5.5″ in diameter and 2″ tall. It is finished with the EEE Ultrashine and ShellaWax combo.

Even though I’m quite happy with the final result I doubt if I will rush out to purchase any more Lacewood bowl blanks any time soon. Unlike the candle holder I found turning this bowl a real challenge since the wood seemed very brittle which caused finishing issues with the end grain. I can assure you that it was much larger in diameter when I started!

Here are some more photos:

Continue reading 'A Lovely Little Lacewood Bowl'

In keeping with the garden and patio theme here are two small garden benches that I built a couple of years ago. I (my wife) had to give them a new coat of paint this year to ’spruce’ them up a little. Each of them are just over 3 feet long, 12 inches wide and about 18 inches tall.

They are just a couple of pieces of 2 X 10’s and a bit of 1 X 4 that my son brought home from a construction site that I slapped together. However, simple as they are they make great useful, accent pieces. I cut a couple of notches out of the skirt to add a bit of Southwest style.

Here you can see them in the garden and on the patio:

Continue reading 'Simple Garden Benches Add Accent'

Well, my wife and I finally got around to getting the patio ready for summer. As you can likely tell by the recent posts, we have been travelling quite a bit so getting the chance to stay at home and putter around the yard is a real treat!

I came across a gang of little fellows who reside in the gardens around the house and was lucky to catch them all together having a bit of a confab:

These guys were carved 3 or 4 years ago out of either Birch or Poplar logs. There was no finish applied so they are showing wear.

After I snapped the above shot it startled them and they ran off to hide. I was able to spot them again throughout the gardens. Here’s some more photos I captured of them:

Continue reading 'Grinning Garden Gods In The Green'

Here’s a candle holder that I recently made out of Lacewood. It is about 3.5″ in diameter and 2″ tall. It’s finished with the Shellawax combo.

I bought a Lacewood bowl blank and was lucky to also find a small piece of it in the scrap bin. Since I hadn’t turned Lacewood before I thought I’d start with the piece of scrap. It was easy to turn and even though it has a coarse texture it finished up pretty nice.

Lacewood is a wood that comes from Australia. It is also known as Silky Oak, likely because of the prominent rays that are similar to Oak. It is a reddish brown / pinkish color.

Continue reading 'A Lacewood Candle Holder'

Here’s a bowl that I turned made out of West African Zebrawood. Zebrawood, also known as Zebron, has a figure that reminds of a Zebra with its contrasting light and dark coloring.

The bowl is almost 5″ at the top and tapers to 3″ at its base. It is about 2″ high and is finished with Ultrashine and Shellawax.

There is a dark spot near the bottom of the bowl that gives it a bit of a focus point. This might have been a branch at one time.

Here are some photos of different views:

Continue reading 'West African Zebrawood Bowl'

Here’s a Maple cutting board with Walnut accents that I recently did. It’s about 7″ square and the Walnut strips are 1/4″ wide. It’s finished with beeswax.

This was a cool exercise in creating a different pattern with the contrasting woods and something that I will be exploring more of in the future.

Back to the shop…

Here is another collection of wine stoppers that I turned recently. As you can see, woodturning is quite addictive! It doesn’t take much time to complete a project, these taking less than a half hour to turn and finish.

Items like this make great gifts. When taking a bottle of wine to a dinner party or a barbeque I plan on taking one of these to leave with the hosts.

The process for making them is quite easy as explained here in this post.

Here are closeups of the individual wine stoppers:

Continue reading 'Another Collection Of Wine Stoppers'

In between other projects I’ve been puttering away at making a variety of wine stoppers. Using scrap pieces of wood and the tricks I learned at the wine stopper course I took last month I am getting into the habit of turning one as a bit of practice. Here’s four that I did recently:

These are great little projects to make. They don’t take much time and are an excellent exercise in spindle turning. They also make great use of small scraps of wood that may be lying around.

Here are closeup photos of each of the stoppers:

Continue reading 'A Collection Of Wine Stoppers'

Here is a couple of pens that I just turned. The pen on the top is in the European Round Top pen style and is made out of Buckeye Burl. The pen on the bottom is in the Slimline style and made out of Tulipwood.

Buckeye is a beautiful wood available throughout North America, specifically the US state of Ohio where it is the State Tree. The burl has a terrific swirling grain with multi-colored layers. I find that it looks like some varieties of animal horn.

Tulipwood is an exotic wood from northern Brazil, not to be confused with Poplar which is also referred to as Tulipwood. The heartwood is a beautiful pink-yellow with a pronounced striped figure in varying shades of salmon pink and rose red. The grain is straight but more often irregular, with a fine texture.

Both pens are finished with the UltraShine and Shellawax combo.

Back to the shop…

No, it’s not Christmas! And not that kind of goose! This is a flying Canada goose that I carved a couple of years ago as a Christmas gift for my wife. It was a whimsical project in a folk art kind of way that was fun to do.

It was based on an article in Issue #4 of the Carving magazine. I was intrigued by the way that the wings were done so I thought I’d give it a try. It was also my first time at painting a piece.

The project was quite simple. Basically cutting the pattern out for the body and a bit of carving around the head and beak. The wings were cut out and feathers carved using a V tool. It sits on a wooden shaft and base and stands approximately 22″ high.

Here is a close up of the wing. You can see where it was carved to give a layered look:

Continue reading 'A Carved Flying Canada Goose'