Last week my woodturning club (www.fingerlakeswoodturners.com) had the pleasure of hosting a demonstration by world-class turner, Al Stirt of Enosburg Falls, Vermont (http://www.alstirt.com) at our monthly meeting. Al is world-famous for his turned and carved objects including square and fluted bowls. For our demonstration, Al turned and embellished one of his signature square bowls.
Before getting into any turning, Al shared pictures of some of his turned and carved work. Along with these pictures Al noted some of the inspiration for the embellishments that he does on his turned pieces – many of these ideas come from nature as well as looking at work in other mediums such as pottery. Al’s advice here is that woodturners should look outside the world of woodturning for fresh ideas and inspiration. This will help to avoid mimicking the work of other woodturners and will promote the development of a unique style of their own.
Al also shared some thoughts about safety in the shop. He shared experiences where he and other turners have been hurt in the past by not taking basic safety precautions around the lathe. Ultimately, the moral of his safety story was to always wear a face-shield while turning, Good advice, indeed.
From there, Al got right into the demo for the night. Starting with a dry piece of cherry about 9” square and 2” thick, he mounted it on a screw chuck with what would be the bottom of the bowl facing out. The screw penetrated about ½” into the wood and he noted that he uses the largest jaws on his chuck for this to eliminate any instability in the piece. Al also used the tail stick to support the piece and indicated that he always does this for extra safety and only removes the tail-stock when necessary, even when using a chuck to hold the work-piece.
Al began turning the bottom of the bowl with a ½” swept-back bowl gouge. The rule of thumb here is to always keep your hands behind the tool rest when turning a square object on the lathe. He first created a short tenon for later reversing to a chuck and then moved onto shaping the bottom. He stressed taking light cuts during the shaping process, especially as he approached the edges to avoid chipping out the work. Al often decorates the bottoms of his pieces as well as the top. Before doing that on this piece he showed how he shear scrapes the surface for a clean cut to eliminate much if any need for sanding. He did this by spritzing the surface of the wood lightly with some water and then scraping with a 1” scraper presented to the work at a high shear angle. This scraper has a slight radius along its tip and is sharpened at a steep angle. After sharpening, Al hones off the aggressive burr left by the grinder with a diamond hone. He puts back on a less aggressive burr with a couple of light strokes of the hone before shear scraping the wood. Al noted that the water tends to lubricate the cut and soften the fibers of the wood leaving a very smooth surface behind.
After shear scraping the surface, he moved on to creating some shallow coves in the bottom of the bowl using the same scraper but presented at a lower angle to cut the coves. Al first marked out the spacing for the coves with a carpenter’s pencil. He does not measure any of the markings that he makes but rather prefers to do them by eye as mere guidelines for the subsequent turning. With the coves cut, he went back to the shear angle with the scraper, repeatedly pushing in lightly to create a series of grooves across the width of each cove.
With the work on the bottom complete the piece was reversed and held in a chuck by the tenon. Al again used the tailstock for support as he trued the surface of the piece with the gouge and shear scraper. With the edges of the piece at a thickness (approximately 3/8”) that he wanted to remain for carving, the tailstock was removed and he proceeded to hollow out the bowl. Again he started with the ½” bowl gouge. Al performed finishing cuts after the hollowing using a smaller gouge. This gouge had a more traditional grind at a very steep angle. The wings were only slightly ground back and he relieved the heel of the gouge with a secondary bevel. With a light touch and cutting on the left of side of the gouge, Al was able to get a very smooth surface on the interior of the bowl. The last treatment for the interior of the bowl was series of small surface grooves. Al also a made a single deeper groove on the top surface of the piece to serve as a stopping point for the subsequent carving.
Before removing the piece from the lathe for embellishment, Al penciled a series of concentric circles on the flat surface of the piece as well as a series of radial lines out toward the edges to use as guidelines during the carving process. Next he reversed the bowl onto a vacuum-chuck to finish the foot and with that, the turning part of the demo was complete.
For carving, Al used a micro-motor tool from Wood Carvers Supply. There are many possibilities for these types of machines (Foredom, NSK, etc.) however, this one is reliable and reasonably priced. Al noted that to get introduced to this kind of work, a Dremel tool would be sufficient. For most of his pieces Al uses rotary chisels from http://www.rotarychisel.com to do the embellishment. On this piece Al showed carving treatments with two rotary chisels on different sections of the piece. He also showed another treatment done with a rotary burr shaped like a small cylinder with a rounded top.
The carving itself was done randomly while using the lines on the piece as a general guide. Al first carved along the concentric circles and next along the radial lines to create a random, hatched pattern. Each of the rotary chisels produced different results and Al noted that every piece is different even with the same person and the same tools. Depending on the rhythm of the work and the amount of force used during the carving process, varying results are obtained. The rounded, cylindrical burr was used in a repeated serpentine pattern to produce another design in another area of the turning. After the carving was completed Al went over it with a nylon bristle brush in a slow spinning drill to remove and fuzz leftover from the carving. He does use 3M radial bristle disks for this as well but the hardware store version that he used in the demo seemed to do the trick just fine.
The last step in the process was to paint the surface of the carved areas with black milk paint. Though Al uses black often, he has started to use other colors as well. Every color and wood combination will produce different results when some of the paint is abraded off the surface once it has dried. Al likes to use black paint with cherry because, once abraded, it shows a coppery-colored sheen under the black. The painting process was quick and simple and after the paint had dried Al used Scotch-brite to gently abrade some paint away from the surface of the carvings. Typically, he uses some kind of clear top coat over the surface once the painting steps have been completed, though for the purposes of the demo the piece was left at this stage.
This demo was a great source of information and inspiration. Al encouraged us all to take the ideas and techniques presented and practice them. He stressed that there is enough room out there for many unique variations on the theme and that we should strive to take these ideas in our own direction as we evolve as woodturners.
Al Stirt has additional information on his web site (http://www.alstirt.com) regarding the tools and grinds he uses as well as sources of supply for many of the accessories he uses in his work – look for the Student Resources link.
Tags: Al Stirt, carved turning, embellished turning, Finger Lakes Woodturners, fluted bowl, square bowl
Well, now that the legs have all been attached it was time to start the shaping of the leg to seat joints. If you’ve been following along, you know that there was a good amount of material that at each joint location that needed to be removed and sculpted into the seat to be more graceful and aesthetically pleasing. Especially on the front legs, where the glued-up leg blanks offered a built-in clamping block for attaching the legs, there was quite a bit of material to take away.
Before diving in to the sculpting efforts I performed one more operation on the arms. This was to prepare the arm to rear-leg joint. To do this, I first cleaned up each of the rear legs at the arm joint location. These were still rough from the original band sawing. I just did this with a few swipes of a sharp block plane. Next, I clamped each arm at the front leg transition area and adjusted it so that it was fairly tight against the rear leg at the joint location. Because the angles were no perfectly matched, these joints needed to be trued to one-another. This was done with some strips of 100-grit sand paper between the two pieces at the joint. I pulled the sand paper through the joint, pulling away from the side that the grit was on so that I did not round over the edges of the pieces. This took a while with the grit alternating from the arm-side to the rear leg side. After a bit of work I had good tight joints. After I had done this and ripped several strips of sand paper in the process, I thought about putting some strapping/packing tape on the back side of the sand paper to strengthen it – I’ll file that idea away for the next time I have to do this which will be when I fit the rockers to the chair.
With all of the possibilities of stalling exhausted, I arrived at the point where I needed to again take the angle grinder to the chair. After all of the work so far, I was both excited to start the sculpting as well as a bit concerned over this step. This work was done with the angle grinder and a 36-grit disk so material was going to be removed very quickly.
I started with the relatively simple task of leveling the joints between the rear legs and the seat. This got me again used to the motions necessary to smoothly move the grinder and the aggressiveness of the stock removal. Next I moved to the front legs for the more complex of the sculpting tasks. The difficulty here was two-fold: first, sculpt the leg to reveal a smooth curve between the leg and the seat and leaving a continuous line of the front leg; second in doing so, work to move the transition of the joint between the leg and the seat away from the corner. The second point was necessary in order to achieve a smooth curve between the legs and seat without having an abrupt 90-degree corner. Surprisingly, this was accomplished by grinding further into the side of the leg – effectively moving the joint line away from the corner!
In the pictures you can see the progression of the sculpting on the front legs. The first picture shows the original joint. Each subsequent picture shows the steps of removing material to sculpt the leg into the seat. Note how the joint line moves from the corner outward. This was helped on the front side of the leg by relieving the front corner of the seat to allow better access for the grinder.
The last thing to do before putting the grinder on the shelf for a while was to form a round-over along the top and bottom of the seat sides in between the legs. To do this I first marked a line along the edge about ½” in from the corner. I then chamfered between these lines with the grinder trying to keep a smooth line. After that I made smaller chamfers along each edge to create the round-over.
Of course, all of this sculpting will still require more work with the rasp, files and sand paper to complete the job. But, for now the chair is starting to look more sculpted.
Tags: angle grinder, arm joint, Sculpted Rocking Chair, sculpting
Next in the series of reviews of DVD’s from the SmartFlix Woodworking University, I’d like to review the DVD: Wood Finishing Basics by Michael Dresdner. This DVD is one of many DVD’s produced by Taunton Press for Fine Woodworking.
Wood finishing is one of the areas of woodworking that seems to confound many woodworkers. It seems that there is always much trepidation after spending many hours in the woodshop making a beautiful piece of furniture that all of that work can be spoiled by a poor finishing job – and of course, it can! Well, I guess we all either have to live with unfinished furniture pieces or we have to learn the proper ways to prep and finish our projects so that we can obtain the results we are looking for.
Michael Dresdner is a woodworker and wood finishing expert that has worked in many professional finishing shops and written about wood finishing for many woodworking publications over the years. In this DVD, Michael aims to arm the viewer with the necessary information and techniques to: prepare a surface for finishing and to achieve professional results with one of several different types of finishes. Although this DVD is a bit older now, the information presented is just as relevant today as it was when the DVD was first released.
Dresdner starts with a thorough treatise on surface preparation and sanding. As Dresdner states – no finish will cover the sins of a poorly prepared surface – the steps to a flawless finish start with the proper and thorough surface prep. In the DVD, Dresdner takes the viewer through the techniques of both power and hand sanding and discusses the properties of many of the sandpaper products on the market today.
With the surface prepared on several projects, Dresdner then shows techniques for three different hand-applied finishes: a wax finish, hand rubbed polyurethane varnish finish and shellac and wax finish. Using everyday products and simple techniques the viewer is shown practical methods to obtain very acceptable finishes that will work well on many different types of woodworking projects.
Next, Dresdner visits Chris Minick, who shows how to brush on a flawless polyurethane varnish finish. This segment discusses thinning the finish for better flow, various types of brushes and proper brushing technique. The rapport between Dresdner and Minick in the segment is a bit corny however; the information that is relayed about brushing is both useful and complete. Watching Dresdner and Minick brush the finish on a couple of nightstands shows just how easy a good quality brushed-on finish can be to obtain.
Finally, Dresdner covers the principles of spray finishing showing a home-made spray booth and several types of spray-finishing tools. During this discussion he covers how to develop a methodology for spraying a complicated piece like a chair as well as adjusting tools for different spray patterns for optimal results. The spraying is followed by a thorough segment on how to clean spray equipment in order to keep it in top operating condition.
This DVD should provide any woodworker with the basic information necessary to understand surface preparation, the pros and cons of different finishes and different finishing methods. Whether wiping on, brushing or spraying the basics of the techniques are all covered in this DVD. With this info any woodworker will be armed with the skills and strategies to obtain professional quality finishes in a home workshop.
Don’t forget, if you are a new customer and interested in renting these DVD’s, SmartFlix has offered readers of The Craftsman’s Path a $2 discount coupon for your use. Simply use the coupon code: CRAFTPATH when you check out!
Next in the series of reviews of DVD’s from the SmartFlix Woodworking University, I’d like to review the DVD: Basic Box Making by Doug Stowe. This DVD is one of many DVD’s produced by Taunton Press for Fine Woodworking.
Doug Stowe is a woodworker from Eureka Springs, Arkansas and he has been known for his wooden box making for many years. This DVD is a companion to his book: Basic Box Making and it covers the design and construction of his boxes as well as many of the jigs and techniques that he uses to make them.
Box making is something that has always appealed to me. The scale and scope of the work are such that beautiful and functional objects can be made with minimal material and in a relatively short time. However, if you have ever made a wooden box, you quickly realize that a good deal of precision and detailed woodworking is required to execute one properly. This DVD aims to demonstrate the skills and techniques required for every woodworker to do just that.
It is evident from this DVD that Stowe is a very good teacher. He covers things carefully, and clearly, and in terms that a novice can understand. However, that is not to say that the material covered in the DVD is elementary. In fact, this is one of the better woodworking DVD’s that I’ve seen. During the presentation of his box making techniques, Stowe covers the basics of wood movement and the stock preparation steps necessary to take rough stock to the point where the joinery can be cut for each box. This info will benefit any woodworker in his or her quest toward any kind of woodworking project, not just wooden boxes.
Along the way, various jigs and techniques are covered as Stowe produces several elegant boxes made from domestic hardwoods. Stowe actually takes the viewer through the construction and use of most of the jigs that he uses in his work. Some of these are the: cross-cut, miter, box-joint and miter key sleds for the table saw and a spline cutting jig for the router table. This is a big plus for viewers that may think that lots of expensive equipment is necessary to do accurate and precise work. Stowe’s approach is decidedly low-tech but extremely effective. This is evidenced in his discussion on jig building, including his router-table which is as simple and elegant as it gets!
The DVD also includes the construction of several box designs as well as discussions on sanding and finishing and hardware installation. Stowe’s flipping story stick method for routing hinge mortises on the router table and attaching box hinges is worth the rental alone. Throughout the DVD there are many other bits of knowledge from a seasoned woodworker/designer that are vary valuable in their own right – and as an added bonus the viewer gets to see how several beautiful boxes are made! The designs that Stowe builds are a foundation for many other types of wooden boxes that can be made on the woodshop. If you’ve ever considered making a wooden box this DVD is one that you should see.
Don’t forget, if you are a new customer and interested in renting these DVD’s, SmartFlix has offered readers of The Craftsman’s Path a $2 discount coupon for your use. Simply use the coupon code: CRAFTPATH when you check out!
The moment of truth finally arrived and it was time to glue up some of the parts of the chair that have been worked on for some time now. I can tell you that with so much time put into creating these parts and knowing how fast a botched glue-up can occur, it was with some trepidation that I approached this task.
Before doing any glue-ups I needed to create some transition blocks that will sit atop the front legs where they will join into the arms. These blocks started as 3″ by 5″ blocks at about 1 1/2″ thick and will get sculpted into the arms and legs after they are mounted with glue and screws. Because of the compound angles of the front legs the angles for the screw holes were marked by eye to align with both angles of the front legs. This was done on adjacent faces of the transition blocks with a white pencil. Then the blocks were put into a vise at the drill press so that both of the lines were set square to the table and the screw holes were drilled.
With the holes in the transition blocks drilled, the blocks were held in position on top of the legs and the holes were started into the tops of the front legs. These holes were drilled to depth after removing the blocks to allow the bit to reach full depth. Next, glue was applied to the tops of the legs and the underside of the transition blocks and the screws were put in aligning the inside faces of the blocks with the inside edge of the front leg joints.
After the glue on the transition blocks dried, curves were laid out on two faces of the blocks. These curves were done such that they can be sawed on the band saw and/or ground away to fair the legs into the arms. I cut two ends of the blocks on the band saw but kept the offcuts to help later with clamping to the arms. The remaining material will be ground away when shaping the legs into the arms.
I spent a good deal of time dry fitting both the front and rear legs into their respective joints and dry clamping the assemblies to check the fit of the joints. Because of time passing between the initial fitting of these joints the wood has dried out and a few small gaps appeared. As a result I needed a couple of tiny shims the close the gaps. Finally satisfied with the fit of the joints I moved on to the glue up.
I can tell you that the few words that I write here will not convey the amount of prep work and effort involved in the glue up of the legs. The rear legs were first and involved using a couple of 6 degree wedges to apply clamping pressure appropriately. The joints were glues with a liberal coating of Titebond III one legs at a time. Once the first leg was fully seated, then the other leg could be glued before clamps were applied. After the clamping the excess glue was wiped away with a dry towell and the joints were left to dry over night.
The next day, it was time for the glue up of the front legs. I rigged a temporary support to hold the chair up as the first legs was being glued. The other leg was left in place as a clamping point until the first joint had fully seated. Then the other leg could be glued and the clamps were applied. No clamping blocks were needed because the front legs have a “built-in” set of blocks in the excess material at the joint that will eventually be ground away to fair the legs into the the seat.
Tags: glue up, Sculpted Rocking Chair
