Last
night was the final class in our Introduction to Woodturning Course.
Our major task for the evening was to complete the 3-legged stool. The
students had either 1 or 2 of the legs completed in the previous class,
so they first had to complete turning the remaining legs. I had 2 legs
complete, so I only had to repeat the turnings on the final third leg.
This process went fairly quickly but I needed to make several
measurements with a set of calipers to make sure I had the tenon in the
right diameter and length, and the correct taper to the leg before
putting in the desired beads and cove cuts.
After turning, I sanded the
final leg and then removed it from the lathe and sawed off the waste
end from the bottom of the leg. Each leg had a 1 inch diameter 2 inch
long tenon that was designed to fit into the holes in the stool seat.
To hold the legs in the seat we were going to use wedges inserted into
the tenons, so we used a hand saw to cut a slot into of each tenon,
approximately 1.5 inches long. It was important to cut the slots
parallel to the grain of the tenon. Then each leg was placed in the
appropriate hole in the seat, with the tenon extending about ¾ an inch
above the seat. A Cherry wedge with a bit of carpenter’s glue on the
end was placed in the slot in the ash leg tenon and hammered down
firmly. Here it was important to orient the wedge and tenon so that the
wedge was perpendicular to the grain of the pine seat. This way the
force of the wedge would not split the grain of the seat. We used a
flat saw to cut the excess ends of the tenons and wedges above the seat
and sanded these flush with the surface of the seat.
At
this point in the class there was 1 more hour left, so I was able to
work on a potato masher. I began with a 2 inch diameter 14 inch long
cylinder of sugar maple (the maple was already turned into a rough
cylindrical shape). First I smoothed the surface of the cylinder. The
business end of the masher is the full diameter of the cylinder. The
rest of the masher is the handle and I followed the shape of a model
masher and put a bead at the end of the handle and a cove cut above it.
The handle is tapered in both directions, up and down the handle. Near
the head of the masher the handle had a step up and then a steep curve
to reach the mashing head. I got some help from the instructors to make
a slightly convex surface to the end of the mashing head—I had put a
flat surface on it, but the convex surface does a better job crushing
things. The convex surface was turned using a skew chisel. I used a
parting tool to narrow the connections at both ends of the masher. The
instructor helped part of the handle with the skew and then used a hand
saw to part of the mashing head.
I
want to sand the stool a bit before putting on a finish. I might have
to sign the piece as it is my first attempt at a design of my own. The
potato masher needs some sanding too and then I will put on a food-safe
finish like mineral oil or Boos Block Mystery Oil .
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| Here I am hard at work turning the potato masher. Note my protective face visor and the woodturning smock that keeps the chips from flying down my neck. |
I have included pictures of the stools made by the 3 other students in the class for comparison of design. We were given 3 rectangular blanks of ash and told to turn 3 legs for our stools using any design we wanted. You can see a wide variety of taper and size of the beads, coves, and slot cuts incorporated in each of the stools.
A
fun class all the way around. I am going to need some individual
instruction to move up to bowl turning. But I have the lathe to do that
job as I ordered and received the new JET 1221VS variable speed wood
lathe. Next purchase will be a set of chisels.Here are some websites for inspiration:
PA Wilds Artisan galleries for field trip possibilities
Seay Custom Woodworking
Ebner Turnings
Michael Mocho
Wood blanks -- Rockler
