Post a photo of the last thing you turned

[Stigmorgan]

Thanks @scooby I have 18 of them so far, did have 19 but one was a lot smaller than the rest so gave it to a friend at work, I think I'm going to price them at £12.50 each, £10 feels too low for the material used and time taken but 15 feels too high for them to sell.
Today was not a great day, made 2 larger bells today from some pine I cut a few months ago when the schools new fencing was installed, unfortunately while trying to keep them as thin as possible attemps 3, 4 and 5 ended in explosions due to a greedy gouge (and yes I'm blaming the tool ) sticking with the dark brown handles, one clapper is a piece of chestnut from the scrap bin and the other is from what was left after doing one of the handles, will probably mark these at £17.50, hoping to get a few more this size done and then want to try do a couple of much bigger ones with some of the Ash I got back in February, may have to get creative with handles for them though as the dark stuff I have is only 20mm x 200mm boards

 

[Stigmorgan]

Well I'm counting today as a complete and total bust, first I decided to have a change and do a bowl with a rough turned birch blank I've had lying around for ages, it was a complete pig to cut no matter how sharp I got my gouge, it took over an hour to get it to almost ready for sanding and boom, luckily it missed me, would have hurt like hell.



So I decided to put a piece of Ash on and do a big bell, again it wasn't the easiest to get a good cut but I got the outside 50% shaped then hollowed it out, started sanding and again it blew apart, had got too thin in one spot and didn't notice



At this point I just switched everything off and came back to work

 

[pat from Marck]

Been working on a new car parking area at the inlaws and walked away with a pile of cypree wood so have been busy chopping it up to manageable lump and processing it. So now I have lots of practice wood.

 

[pat from Marck]

After warching all your christmas turning posts i decided to try the crimbo tree as I've never done them. So the first effort and the second and third were not so good but with each one slowly got

better. Then started to play with colour and design and finish. And here's are the results to date about 17cm by 7cm width and the woods cypree

 

[Richard_C]

At this point I just switched everything off and came back to work

Yes, we all have 'oh bother' days.

I spent a happy hour working on a 8x8x1.5 (inch, not mm ) piece of Elm I 'won' in a club raffle. Aiming at a square topped winged bowl, going really really well, tools cutting like a dream, really nice grain ...but as I got near the top edge - bother, woodworm tracks and holes. Too much to rescue. Not visible until I was almost done with the outside.

Cold day, likely to light the woodburner tonight, the Elm will burn nicely.

I quote Chisholm's Law:
"When things appear to be going well, you have overlooked something"

Sodd's Relation Rule also applies:
"The behaviour of inanimate objects tends towards bloody-mindedness"

 

[Stigmorgan]

A successful day was had went out with the sole o mention of just bagging up the immense amount of shavings I've created over the last few weeks, I did that and used the camvac to clean up a lot of the settled dust that was lying everywhere, once finished I looked across at the failed bell from yesterday, there was quite a bit of wood left at the chuck end so I sharpened up and set to it, sanded to 400 followed by abrasive paste then diamond wax, turned over and finished the base, I love it, the grain is amazing. I also cut up another branch of green pine for bells and got one body done, might get out there tomorrow, want a few more of the mid sized bells and a couple of larger ones for the fair on Wednesday evening

 

[Rodpr]

Another day, another lesson learned.

Today it was about not trying to take the nublet down too far when finishing the foot of a bowl. I had finished finish turning a nice natural edge elm bowl and was thinning down the bub when it suddenly gave way. The bowl stayed put for a fraction of a second and then flew across my workshop, colliding with the toolrest on the way.

Luckily I had left enough in the original foot to allow me to make another smaller one. I was considerably more careful about separating the nub second time around.

 

[Stigmorgan]

Only managed a couple of hours in the makerspace today, the grounds keeper was in this morning so I stayed indoors until he was gone, he's a lovely old guy but once he starts talking there's no escaping him, once I got out there just after 2.30 I went straight to the 4 blanks I cut yesterday and and got the mid sized bell bodies done, had a little catch on the last one so had to make a slight design change that I actually quite like. Tomorrow I'll make the handles and clappers then move on to trying another large bell from one of my Ash blanks

 

[Stigmorgan]

So yesterday I finished the 4 bells I made the bodies for on Sunday, I remembered to check the site tree register too and the branch came from a western red cedar, once the handles and clappers were done I decided to have another attempt at a large Ash bell, yet again it was a pig to cut both on the outside and on the inside but I got it done and was fairly happy with it, today I made the handle from a piece of schools old Gym equipment, possibly beech but I'm not sure, I made the clapper from a scrap of Western red cedar, unfortunately the hole I drilled in the body wasn't straight (turns out the screws on one of the 4 jaws on my chuck had come loose ) so had to enlarge it in order to sit the handle straight which meant I had to use 5 minute epoxy to fill the void and hold it together instead of a friction fit like all the others, also, because hollowing was such a chore I didn't go as deep as I would have liked so the top is about 40mm thick so the handle has a 25mm tenon and I turned a small plug to fill the rest of the hole inside. Once finished I threw a piece of birch on and made a little pot that is gorgeous, I'll put pics of that in a 2nd post.

 

[Stigmorgan]

And here's the birch pot

 

[pat from Marck]

So yesterday I finished the 4 bells I made the bodies for on Sunday, I remembered to check the site tree register too and the branch came from a western red cedar, once the handles and clappers were done I decided to have another attempt at a large Ash bell, yet again it was a pig to cut both on the outside and on the inside but I got it done and was fairly happy with it, today I made the handle from a piece of schools old Gym equipment, possibly beech but I'm not sure, I made the clapper from a scrap of Western red cedar, unfortunately the hole I drilled in the body wasn't straight (turns out the screws on one of the 4 jaws on my chuck had come loose ) so had to enlarge it in order to sit the handle straight which meant I had to use 5 minute epoxy to fill the void and hold it together instead of a friction fit like all the others, also, because hollowing was such a chore I didn't go as deep as I would have liked so the top is about 40mm thick so the handle has a 25mm tenon and I turned a small plug to fill the rest of the hole inside. Once finished I threw a piece of birch on and made a little pot that is gorgeous, I'll put pics of that in a 2nd post.
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Now that looks like an old school bell from my younger days

 

[Richard_C]

Completely off topic but school bell relevant. When my son was in reception class, age 4, one child would go round the playground with the teacher after lunch with the handbell to signal the end of break. Great excitement when it was "your turn". We had to go and collect him straight after break that day, he was so enthusiastic that he whacked his forehead with the bell. No damage done, but maybe prophetic - now he is a freelance orchestral percussionist.

I like that little birch pot, sometimes the simple things work well. It's a bit pot-luck whether the grain and edge shows up just right but sometimes you win and you get a good result.

 

[Fred48]

So yesterday I finished the 4 bells I made the bodies for on Sunday, I remembered to check the site tree register too and the branch came from a western red cedar, once the handles and clappers were done I decided to have another attempt at a large Ash bell, yet again it was a pig to cut both on the outside and on the inside but I got it done and was fairly happy with it, today I made the handle from a piece of schools old Gym equipment, possibly beech but I'm not sure, I made the clapper from a scrap of Western red cedar, unfortunately the hole I drilled in the body wasn't straight (turns out the screws on one of the 4 jaws on my chuck had come loose ) so had to enlarge it in order to sit the handle straight which meant I had to use 5 minute epoxy to fill the void and hold it together instead of a friction fit like all the others, also, because hollowing was such a chore I didn't go as deep as I would have liked so the top is about 40mm thick so the handle has a 25mm tenon and I turned a small plug to fill the rest of the hole inside. Once finished I threw a piece of birch on and made a little pot that is gorgeous, I'll put pics of that in a 2nd post.
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Beautiful. Beech has much smaller medullary rays similar to oak. A few close up images and maybe I could give an opinion

 

[Stigmorgan]

Completely off topic but school bell relevant. When my son was in reception class, age 4, one child would go round the playground with the teacher after lunch with the handbell to signal the end of break. Great excitement when it was "your turn". We had to go and collect him straight after break that day, he was so enthusiastic that he whacked his forehead with the bell. No damage done, but maybe prophetic - now he is a freelance orchestral percussionist.

I like that little birch pot, sometimes the simple things work well. It's a bit pot-luck whether the grain and edge shows up just right but sometimes you win and you get a good result.

I remember those days

With the bark being to thick I just had to keep it on so I've also saturated it with CA in the hope it stays put.

 

[Stigmorgan]

Now that looks like an old school bell from my younger days

School bell was exactly what I was going for

 

[Stigmorgan]

Beautiful. Beech has much smaller medullary rays similar to oak. A few close up images and maybe I could give an opinion

 

[pat from Marck]

Latest attempt from the cypree pile at a tree without a christmas feel and two small bowls with an ancient roman feel from old pottery I'd seen in a museum in Corsica.

i think the tree looks like a cross between Gandalfs hat and an old Japanese tower.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

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That doesn't look like beech to me.

 

[Stigmorgan]

That doesn't look like beech to me.

I just assumed Beech because most of the other school gym equipment is.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Beech has smaller flecks.