More segmenting practice

[scooby]

Occasionally get redwood offcuts when I pop into my local timber merchant. Its always flat/rectangular stuff (and in short lengths) so its handy for practicing segmenting. The 1st one is pretty much finished, the rest are very much work in progress. Quite a few of the joints aren't great, annoyingly.
Had a tiny bit of oak left over from a previous project.
I was intending to make the sphere into a lamp somehow, not sure yet.

 

[Doug B]

They look really good @scooby

 

[bobblezard]

Good stuff, really like the sphere

 

[scooby]

Thank you guys. I'm quite surprised the sphere turned out that well tbh.

 

[gog64]

They look great, I must have a go at something like that myself sometime

 

[Cooper]

Really elegant forms.
Did you use a template to get the sphere accurate? Looking at the top you have a plug did you turn it on a mandrel?
A while ago I turned a set of Oak croquet balls and found them the most challenging piece of free hand turning I've done. Getting them spherical and to a reasonably precise diameter, was very stressful.

 

[scooby]

Really elegant forms.
Did you use a template to get the sphere accurate? Looking at the top you have a plug did you turn it on a mandrel?
A while ago I turned a set of Oak croquet balls and found them the most challenging piece of free hand turning I've done. Getting them spherical and to a reasonably precise diameter, was very stressful.

I made a ply template (cut with my router, so its round enough) and just followed that. The 2 end segments had centre holes so I could glue in a plug/tenon for the drive and live centres to dig into, whilst I did the majority of the turning. The bit of timber filling the hole is the remnant of the plug.

The only stressful bit was making sure the cup centres were a good fit. I tried to size the width of the segment pieces appropriately before hand to keep the weight down. It finished up about about somewhere around 10"-11" in diameter and its pretty heavy, even for softwood. Still needs sanding but I'm not doing that until I get dust collection sorted out.

 

[Nelly111s]

If you look at Richard Findley's (he writes in the Woodturning mag, too) latest post on IG, you'll see some cups for holding the sphere to turn it.

Link here

 

[scooby]

If you look at Richard Findley's (he writes in the Woodturning mag, too) latest post on IG, you'll see some cups for holding the sphere to turn it.

Link here

Thank you, I'll have a look at that. The cup centres served a purpose but I really need to make a better set when I get round (ha..sorry) to sanding.

 

[scooby]

Bit of an update. The bowls were finished and given away a long time ago but the sphere has been rolling around on various floors since I made it. It even survived being dropped Finally got round to re sanding and putting a finish it on it. In the end, I just made a simple plinth and a very ugly finial.

For the finial, I did have a design in mind before starting but went totally off piste and ended up with this abomination. It isn't glue in as I'll be changing it soon.