Jimsworkshop.net
PRO Member
Hello to all! My name is Jim. I am not a wood turner. Yet. I have a Nova DVR XP and I have made a few things, mostly pens, a few salt/pepper mills, and some bottle stoppers and tree ornaments. I make mostly small boxes, some with marquetry, some with veneer, and some using just pretty wood. I have a web site - www.jimsworkshop.net - that you can visit if you want to see some of my work.
Occasionally, a box needs round legs and I need to make them. So, I turn these small things (pens, etc) just to keep proficient enough to be able to make the spindles I need for my boxes. I don’t have a grinder and I use only carbide-tip tools. I have made 3 bowls, but that was years ago when I bought my first mini-lathe (a Jet) and a cheap “set” of lathe tools. I gave them all away 2 years ago to a 14 yr old boy who wanted to learn.
My daughter asked me if I could make a yarn bowl for her mother-in-law. Well, these require a fairly large blank - at least 7” sq by 4” thick. After trying unsuccessfully to find one that size that didn’t require a refinance, I though about the process some more. I thought: when you buy a large block of wood at great expense and then carefully turn about 90% into shavings, you are doing a very wasteful thing. What if you could take a board, say cherry or walnut, and cut that board into segments which you glue together into rings, and... Well, you know the rest.
So here I am trying to learn a new technique just to make a few yarn-bowls. I completed one bowl using 8 segments per ring following an article in Woodworker’s Journal. After about a million test cuts to get my dubby jig set correctly, I was able to get it made. I realized that if I was going to be able to make any more, I needed some tools to make this a fun task and not a frustrating endeavor. I made another post today that show the sled I came up with. Check it out. Now I’m waiting for some steel band clamps to arrive via UPS so I glue up the pieces for by next attempt at a bowl that could become a yarn-bowl. Wish me luck please.
Picture of FIRST Attempt:
Occasionally, a box needs round legs and I need to make them. So, I turn these small things (pens, etc) just to keep proficient enough to be able to make the spindles I need for my boxes. I don’t have a grinder and I use only carbide-tip tools. I have made 3 bowls, but that was years ago when I bought my first mini-lathe (a Jet) and a cheap “set” of lathe tools. I gave them all away 2 years ago to a 14 yr old boy who wanted to learn.
My daughter asked me if I could make a yarn bowl for her mother-in-law. Well, these require a fairly large blank - at least 7” sq by 4” thick. After trying unsuccessfully to find one that size that didn’t require a refinance, I though about the process some more. I thought: when you buy a large block of wood at great expense and then carefully turn about 90% into shavings, you are doing a very wasteful thing. What if you could take a board, say cherry or walnut, and cut that board into segments which you glue together into rings, and... Well, you know the rest.
So here I am trying to learn a new technique just to make a few yarn-bowls. I completed one bowl using 8 segments per ring following an article in Woodworker’s Journal. After about a million test cuts to get my dubby jig set correctly, I was able to get it made. I realized that if I was going to be able to make any more, I needed some tools to make this a fun task and not a frustrating endeavor. I made another post today that show the sled I came up with. Check it out. Now I’m waiting for some steel band clamps to arrive via UPS so I glue up the pieces for by next attempt at a bowl that could become a yarn-bowl. Wish me luck please.
Picture of FIRST Attempt: