Happy Thanksgiving!

Legs and Aprons

Got the legs worked out, and moving on to the aprons, including the curved, front apron.

Two... Three Birds, one Stone

Turns out the jig I made to square the mortise faces was actually solving a general problem, which allowed me to use the jig on several other steps.

Where there's a Jig, there's a Way

I have been experimenting with making curved legs that are normally made from 12/4 from 8/4 stock instead.  The latest step required that I make a jig to properly square the faces into which the mortises will be cut.  Here is a demo of the jig.

Shop safety outside of the shop.

I do not really care for home improvement projects.  Well, perhaps that is a little harsh.  I should say that I do not enjoy them nearly as much as designing and building fine furniture.  The other part of home improvement that I do not like is that I seem to be much more prone to injury doing home improvement projects.  It is not that the tools are any more dangerous than those in my workshop, in fact I would go as far as to say the tools in the shop have a much higher potential for serious injury.  However my shop is a very controlled, thought-out environment.  This largely mitigates the actual incidence of injury. With home improvement projects, the work area is quite ad-hoc, and not nearly as controlled as a properly organized workshop.  
While repairing the termite damage, replacing the window with a door, and building a deck and pergola to go with it, my body took a real beating.  The first and most serious injury I sustained not an hour into this project, during the demolition/removal of the window.  After removing the cripple studs that formed the sill, and not realizing that there were still nails sticking up through the bottom plate, I stepped up to get a better look at the header, and POP!  two nails through my foot, right when I had a gaping 6'x6' hole in my house.  (My toe is still sore a month later.)
Fortunately, the rest of my injuries during this project were minor: a bumped head, overworked wrists, etc. but this experience made me re-think the whole issue of safety when not working in the controlled environment of the shop.  I am also interested in what anyone with both workshop and work-site experience has to offer regarding work-site safety.

Do You Twitter?

    About a week ago, I posted a question at my favorite woodworking forum LumberJocks, to see if woodworkers would really be interested in following my daily woodworking goings on.  They predominant attitude is that Twitter is just another time sink to become addicted to, and indeed nearly half of "tweets" are classified as "pointless babble".  However, considering myself to be a reasonable guy and a critical thinker, I wanted to give Twitter a fair shake.  After all, it is important to evaluate the potential value of a technology apart from how some or even most people use it.
    In my day job as a software engineer, one of the first questions we ask back to the marketing guys when a new feature is proposed is:  "What are the use cases?", in other words, how will the feature be used in such a way that it provides actual value?  I used the same approach in evaluating Twitter.
   Use case #1: Socializing.  I can see where a group of friends (in my case, woodworking buddies) with either busy lives or separated geographically, could carry on daily conversations and maintain friendships that would otherwise be difficult to maintain.  The problem for me is I have only, one, two, ..... two friends.
    Use case #2: Drawing traffic to a web site.  Empirically, I have not seen a significant increase in traffic to my site since I started "tweeting"
   Use case #3: Education (following an "expert").  I love to teach others what I know.  My primary means of disseminating my knowledge is through my "Straightedge" videos.  However, making a video of the quality I want to create takes an enormous amount of time (and often frustration).  I have been looking for, for some time, another way to educate that is more accommodating to my time constraints.  I thought  that tweeting (with pictures) what I am up to in the shop could provide that outlet, but it mostly feels like I am talking to myself.  (In fact I have resorted to just that.  LOL)
   Use case #4: Getting (timely) expert help.  I have a home repair project that I have to start tomorrow which is what I had in mind for this use case.  I know my way around making furniture, but I am not an expert on home improvement.  Sure,  I can manage my way, but if I get into a pickle, who can I call?  If I were lucky, I would have a buddy or cousin that is a only a phone call away that can shoot on over and help me out.  But what if the only expert you know is in Montana, say, or is local but has to work for a living.  I could keep them posted by firing off a "TwitPic" as I progress, and if I get into a pickle, there is always those tiny pockets of time throughout their day in which they can "tweet" advice.    
    We'll see how this last use case pans out tomorrow.  However, I have gone from being lukewarm about Twitter to being a little cold.  Perhaps it is "just not for me".  Perhaps I am just being my usual impatient self.  Perhaps I will give it just one more week.

If at first you don't succeed

After blowing through the bottom a second time, trying to salvage the bit of remaining bowl leftover from the first blowout, I decided to give it one more go from scratch, with what was left of this beautiful chunck of wood.  After all, third time is a charm, right?

This time I pulled it off.  And good thing, too, after all this is a beautiful piece of wood:  Spalted, Curly Japanese Maple.  Say that three times fast.  And to think that it was headed for the garbage.  

Ya can't win 'em all

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.  I only recently started making these thin-walled goblets, and I got through the first four without a hitch.  I also have come dangerously close to blowing through the bottom of a bowl on several occasions, but always seem to manage to get through it. 

Not this time.

My neighbor was tearing out his dead Japanese Maple last Saturday, and I was thinking Maple plus dead equals spalting.  Sure enough it was indeed spalted.

I figured this piece of wood would make a great goblet, so I chucked it up and went to work.  I knew that I was getting thin on the bowl, so I setup my 500 watt shop light to monitor the thickness, but for some reason, this wood was not a very good conductor of light.  I thought I still had a lot of room, and then Bam!

I guess it had to happen sooner or later.  Hopefully I can still salvage the piece for another, albeit smaller, goblet, or for some other project.

Eucalyptus Bowl completed

As much as I complained about how brutal it is to turn Eucalyptus when it is dry, the bowl I was working on came out quite nice.  The heartwood has that typical orange hue, and the bowl has a lot of interesting artifacts, as is often found in Eucalyptus.  

You can see the little dark spots in the bowl.  I am not sure what they actually are, but they look like little mini, elongated knots.  As well Eucalyptus is tough.  This bow looks really light, but at about 1/4" thick, it feels really heavy.

Perhaps it is the results that have always made me forget about how miserable it can be to turn Eucalyptus.  It is a good thing, because if the last thing I remembered was all the dust off the end of the gouge, I would be reluctant to ever mount this species on my lathe again.  LOL.

Is it Eucalyptus? Or is it Dustwood

I managed to squeeze a drop or two of time today, to get back to that Eucalyptus bowl mounted in the chuck on my lathe.

I turn a lot of green wood, and living here in Northern California, I really enjoy access to species of that are typically not available from local wood suppliers as well as the variety of species that grow here and not in too many other areas of the country: Claro Walnut, Live Oak, California Pepper-tree, to name a few.  

We also have quite a few Eucalyptus trees of several species.  The picture to the right is Red Ironbark.  Most Eucalyptus has that deep orange/red heartwood and a creamy tan sapwood, and you can play and have a lot of fun working with this contrast.

The downside of Eucalyptus, as I was so poignantly reminded of today, is that it is no fun to turn once it is dry.  It is brutal on cutting edges, and almost impossible to get a nice clean final pass on the inside of the bowl, even with a razor sharp bowl gouge.  And what comes off the tip of the gouge is closer to dust that to shavings.  Fortunately, it does sand well, which means...uh...even more dust.

I think I will call it Dustwood from now on.

Spalted Paper Birch Surprise

Lately I have been doing a lot of turning, after having released my video on using wood from  locally felled trees for turning.  Feeling that my tool control had reached a new level, I wanted to put my skills to the test, by attempting one of those really thin-walled goblets  So, out to the wood pile I went to find a chuck of "scrap" wood.

Now, one of the greatest joys of turing green wood is that you never know when you will strike gold in a piece of what was supposed to be "scrap"