Thanks for the kind comments
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I thought each decoration would only take half an hour or so, but ash is hard on the blades. My first took a couple of hours.
For my second, I took some WIP piccies but even with the encouragement of having its photograph taken and ensuing fame, the ash refused to let me cut it any quicker. Perhaps it knew I was a rotten photographer.
These decorations start off as a square cut block of wood. The pattern is fastened to it using spray mount adhesive so that the centre of the pattern falls across the corner of the block along a marked central line. The piccy shows it better than I can describe it:
(This pattern isn't the one I used for the rest of this post, not that it matters much. Nobody ever accused me of consistency )
I also drilled pilot holes in the block so that I could pass my blade through to make the piercing cuts which would remove the inner parts of the decoration first. Some turns on the outer cuts are rather tight so I also drilled holes near those locations; it's easier to manoeuvre the wood in a drilled hole rather than having to cut one out as you go along
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The inner parts were cut and removed first, then the outer cuts were made. Cutting and removing the inner parts is quite straight forward - they just drop out. However, after you've made all the outer cuts you'll find the workpiece tends to move about in the centre of the block, so you need to hold it in position. Sellotape seems to work okay for this, so I just wrapped some around the whole block.
Eventually all the cuts were completed and the pattern (plus sellotape) could be removed.
The wooden block was shaken gently and the decoration obligingly fell out of the middle, together with the waste wood that had been supporting the workpiece as it was cut.
This is the raw decoration, freshly cut and awaiting dips into finishing oil.
I hope you can see, Chas, why it wouldn't be possible to prepare a compound cut such as this on the lathe. You need to have a square block of wood throughout the production process to keep everything perfectly square to the blade. Of course, you also need to ensure that the blade is perfectly square to the table; an error of ¼º is noticeable and an error of ½º is fatal.
Gill
