Finally got round to uploading a shot of the mallets in use.
This was taken at a 10 day juggling convention/festival which takes place in a farmer's meadow - this year he prepared a separate mowed area to play in. The buttercups and grass round the outside made for some fun tactical play and the uneven surface made things interesting. I even made it to the final
My lathe is currently out of action, but here's something I made recently...
The box compartment is 8cm long. Unknown brown wood with ebonised sycamore. Wall thickness is 2mm.
It was made for the box/container competition at our club last month. I don't make many boxes and I wanted to try something different that other members maybe wouldn't think of making. I've been experimenting recently with bowls that have round bases that allow them to rock and that may what led me to this design.
Constructing the body and base was done by turning a box body as normal but without a base - this was mainly done with large saw-tooth bits (starting smaller and working up so as not to stress the wood too much). Once most of it was finished I swapped the end held in the chuck and finished inside the second end (holding was done in my long nose jaws but with the wood held inside a plastic sleeve so as not to mark it).
Once the tubes were turned they were split on the bandsaw.
The hole in the base for the box to rest on was created by putting the thin half tube back in the chuck but mounted crossgrain and protruding out so I could turn it (carefully!).
The black ends were pretty straightforward to turn but I wish that I'd done them in ebony or some other dark exotic as the ebonising didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped (I hardly do it though, so I guess I should have expected that!).
The top round knob has a small shaft on the end to help lock it and the inside rib into place - the rib is there to strengthen the lid.
The finish is acrylic lacquer.
As its the first one of these I'm kind of pleased with the result but think I can do better, especially with the finishing.
It generated some interest at the club but only came 7th (out of 19th - all entries can be seen
here)
Duncan
