January 2012

I did my first craft show in November at the Farmers market here in Murfreesboro. Bobby Creighton, Joe Simon, Don Rounsavill and I shared a booth and it came as no surprise that ours was the best looking booth at the show. To our dismay good looks aren't selling in today's economy and while the show had a pretty good turnout, most folks were looking and not buying. Isn't hindsight wonderful, If I'd known before the show what I know now, I wouldn't have had to lug near as much stuff inside and set it up, not to mention trying to remember where I had it all stored and dragging it all back in the house. Guess what we're giving for presents this Christmas? The Christmas ornaments went over very well.

As a "Newby" at the show I was surprised by what people were interested in . What I expected to be "hot" items the people were not interested in. I had lots of Christmas ornaments and sold one, I had a nice display of Aspen leaf pendants  and never even showed one. Those simple wooden salad tongs with the wooden spring leafs  were mostly what I sold along with an inside-out candle stick and a small apple bowl with all the cracks glued up. The really nice larger bowls got lots of ooh's and aah's but no takers. I received lots of complements on my craftsmanship, but complements don't fund the purchase of new tools. Bobby had some luck with his pens, Joe with his birdhouses and Don sold a variety of items but none of us had a really good day. From what I could tell it was pretty much the same for the other vendors. The big surprise was that the craft show vendor food was pretty good, at least the bowl of Freto pie was. That was some good chili.

What we did do a lot of was promoting our woodworking club. We visited with quite a few people that expressed an interest in learning more about woodworking and after hearing more about the club than they expected, we let them be on their way with a full pocket book but with the club's brochure in their hand. Speaking of the brochure, I think it's getting close to time for an up date. While we couldn't boost about regular workshop sessions we did commit our membership to being downright helpful to new members with questions and needing a little assistance with their learning curve. In fact I stated that the only one that can out talk a woodworker about their favorite subject is a sailor and I should know as I have been both. If you don't believe me just ask me sometime about racing the Galveston Bay Catamaran Championships --- that is sometime when you have lots of time on your hands.

  Well Sports fans, it's a new year and it finally got cold. Those warm days after Christmas kept encouraging me to open the garage doors, drag my tools out on the driveway and make something. That's the thing about rough sawn lumber, you have to cut it close to size and then 4-square it. This all makes a lot of shavings and sawdust so it's best not to do it in a closed up garage, thus the driveway. I try to plan ahead to have plenty of stock thicknessed for upcoming projects, like 5/8 thick stock to make salad tongs, 1/8" stock for inserts when making ornaments and other things with a Celtic design (1/8" because the table saw blade has a 1/8" kerf) and  3/4" to 1 1/8" stock for stave bowl sides and 3/4" stock for the stave bowl bottoms.

When I first turn a green bowl, the shavings pile up quick so I like to turn them in the driveway. The second turning is not overly messy so I can do them in a heated garage. Now speaking of rough stock, when we sawed up trees at the battleground about a year and a half ago, we sawed up an Elm tree about 24" in diameter and to my surprise there wasn't much interest in Elm. I guess when Walnut and Maple are available, Elm becomes trash wood. I took three 8' slabs 1 1/4" thick and about 18" wide, cut them to 4' lengths to fit in my van then stickered them in my attic. I recently took one slab down and sawed it up to make some salad tongs and staved bowls. I found it to be dry but also heavy and very hard. so far I have completed one stave bowl and it's beautiful and another is in the works. I really like the Elm and I thank every one for ignoring the Elm.

The reason for the interest in making some staved bowls stems from a nice board of Curly Cherry that Stanley Dunn found for me at BRC in McMinville. I have been wanting to make a bowl with it for some time and I think the remainder of the board will make a beautiful jewelry box but I need to obtain some crotch Cherry veneer for the top.

David Arnold gave me some nice Cherry that I cut up in the usual manner, cut the piece of log lengthwise to remove the pith and make bowls out of the two remaining slabs which usually results in the bowl grain running side to side so you are turning two sides of edge grain and two sides of end grain and you only have two areas of tear-out to sand out. You have to sand the whole inside to remove those two spots so I wanted to try and end grain bowl so I would get to sand the tear-out around the entire bowl. We recently felled two Walnut trees at Butch Roths place in Smyrna and the main trunks will be sawn for lumber, but the major limbs will yield a lot of good bowls reaction wood or not. I cut a 14" piece about 12" in diameter, coated the ends with Anchor seal and yesterday decided to turn two 6" deep green Walnut end grain bowls. The bark made them too large for my 12" lathe so I band sawed the largest diameter cylinder I could get and remain under 12". I learned that even green end grain turns harder than edge grain and that rather than long wet shavings, I got wet sawdust and lots of it. I did manage to get the two bowls first turned and painted with Anchor Seal so I can place them in brown paper bags in the attic to dry. The nice thing is they will dry slowly throughout the winter and when warm weather hits  they should be less susceptible to cracking. There still is that thing about the pith in the bottom  but time will tell if it cracks badly. The bowls are 10" in diameter so I left the walls and bottom 1" thick, the 10% recommended by the real woodworkers who love to give advice in their books. In the past I have usually stayed around 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick because thicker has cracked on me. Walnut is pretty stable so I thought what the hey.

Now back to David's cherry, I first cut two nice bowls and they are drying as I write, but I had some scraps left over that I hated to burn so I cut some end grain cylinders about 2 1/2" in diameter and 4 to 6" long and painted them. To keep from tripping over them one day I roughed out some small goblets, and cored them with a large Forrestner bit and stuck them in the attic. The other day I took one down and finish turned it and it made a beautiful little goblet so I turned the rest of them and Nancy really likes them, which is my ultimate test. The only problem is that if I brought in a chunk of firewood and said look at what I made, she would blow smoke up my ass and say it looks great. She has really great tastes and I respect her opinion but I am aware that she'd never say that anything I made was crap.

I finished turned a very small bowl I made from Hickory that Joe and Russell picked up for free at a sawmill. It was free because these 6x6 pieces had the pith up the center and began cracking as I loaded them in my van. I only managed to salvage two small bowls before I had a large supply of Hickory Bar-B-Q wood, but one of them has the most unusual grain pattern, it looks like the rocks at Mohab Utah State Park and all the powder-post beetle holes looks like the rocks were eroded by ancient water ways.

Even though small turnings usually take as much time to complete as a large item, I find myself turning more and more small items  because in many cases small shows off the wood better than "big" ---- and ---- they're easier to store.