My Eagle Bowl attempt

[Glenn McCarron]

After a number of emails back and forth with Lloyd I have decided to try to reproduce his amazing Eagle Bowl. I have spent many sessions trying to figure out the actions to produce the eagle and I think I have finally wrapped my head around it. I want to make mine about 10 inches in diameter and 5-6 inches tall. This meant scaling down the eagle sample to give me a segment of about 4.24-4.5 inches in length. Lloyd graciously offered to look at my files and did some Sketchup images to show me a few issues with my size and design. Having his pointers and suggestions will make my build go pretty smooth I'm hoping.

Normally I would have built the lower bowl and then the feature ring but again Lloyd suggested doing it in reverse. Once I am happy with the feature ring I can build a bowl to match the final size.

I finally got a bit of shop time today and took my 5/4 wood from rough to finished sizes and to the first glue up.

I will post pics as I go but please if anyone has suggestions, concerns or if you have tried this design I would be interested in hearing from you.

I used 2 inch Walnut on both sides, 3/16 maple and padauk and a 3/8 maple centre strip.

Thanks.

 

[mfisher]

Keep us posted. It will be interesting to see how it turns out. Other than chevrons, I have not ventured much into multi generation cuts. Though I do play with Lamination Pro to see what design possibilities are.

 

[stuart johnson]

Once again I'm looking forward to watching your journey. Thanks for your posting updates.

 

[Curly]

I'm anxious to see how your Eagle Bowl works out. I would also be interested in any advice you or any of the other members have in how to keep Padauk dust out of the Maple. I recently made a dizzy bowl using Padauk and Maple as well as several other species of wood. The orange dust was terrible. Any help would be appreciated and good luck with your project.

 

[Glenn McCarron]

Day 2 happened today. Planed my first step glue up, then set up my sled at 15 degrees and the stopper to 7/8. Then sanded the fuzzies, built another jig to help with the glue up.











Next time up is the second generation cuts. My glue is running low and my local supplier does not have any Titebond Original so I may have to try something else. Any suggestions? I have Titebond III but wanted to avoid the darker color in the joints.

 

[Glenn McCarron]

Hi Curly, thanks for the comment. My last project also had walnut, maple and padauk and your right in the fact that the dust is very fine and tends to get in the pores. I tried my best to keep it clean mainly with compressed air prior to applying the finish. Looking close you still can see some discolouration in the maple (slight reddish tinge). Your Dizzy bowl is very amazing, I hope to try one soon as well. I'm hoping to use tons of strips from my scrap pile, you know the ones that you just can't throw away.

 

[stuart johnson]

I haven't used it but I have heard white glue works and has a longer set time.

 

[Lloyd Johnson]

Looking good so far, Glenn. The first two generations are the most important, IMHO. In addition to making the joints line up, if you can keep them flat and straight, it keeps you from having to plane or sand the next generation board more than a fraction. Keeping them as thick as possible is the goal. With more thickness, if the feature ring is not in perfect alignment with the remainder of the bowl, you'll still have enough wood to create an acceptable wall profile.

 

[Glenn McCarron]

Thanks Lloyd for the comments. I am very concerned about the thickness as you mention. In my first lamination I had a board with a thinner edge that I missed. After the first planing I was already down to 1 1/16. Luckily my second glue up done on my MDF jig kept it very flat and I got away with just sanding a few bumps of glue. I'm hoping to keep it this way again prior to the third generation cuts.

 

[Glenn McCarron]

Today I completed the second generation cuts and glue up. ( After buying some Lepages Pro Wood glue). It seemed to go as planned.






This is my MDF jig used for glue up and to pull it square.



I use more wax paper in my shop than the kitchen. On the bottom to keep it from sticking to the MDF and on the top under my clamp to stop it from staining the wood. Not sure why it does that so quickly? Oxidation of the pipe???

 

[Lloyd Johnson]

Perfect!

You really have this process dialed in and you'll be teaching workshops on this in no time.
Let's see what the final thickness of the finished eagle is before making final turning decisions as there are always options. If you can stay close to an inch thick, I think you'll be fine with your initial design. Any less than that and you might want to consider adding a 1/8" to 1/4" vertical spacer between the segments. This would have the same effect as reducing the size of the eagle horizontally and will make the ring a bit larger which will reduce the curvature by a small amount and that may be just enough. You can always pick up a fraction of an inch or so by making the wall a little thinner, but too thin and it could come apart. Another option is to add one more eagle to the ring which will make the curvature less. You could name the piece Nine Eagles
I'm sure you will want to make the wall profile perfectly vertical throughout the thickness of the eagle ring so just keep that in mind when it is necessary to size the rings below this ring.

Before gluing the eagles together, you *might* want to consider cutting the inside diameter using a bandsaw jig. Once you have the dimensions of the final segment, let me know and I'll draw you a SketchUp model showing the jig with dimensions. You can build it very quickly and it is pretty foolproof. Turning the outside of the feature ring does not add a lot of stress to the ring, although you can also make a pattern-maker's bandsaw jig for this. Turning the inside diameter does create a lot of stress on the ring and if anything were to break it, it would be this process.

 

[Glenn McCarron]

Thanks for that Lloyd. The bandsaw jig intriques me. I will let you know the final thickness. I'm really hoping that I can once again just use my hand sander and clean up the glue. This would keep me around 1 1/16.

I like the name "Nine Eagles" but the making the geometry of my cuts work that perfectly may prove interesting. Half rings I can deal with.

 

[Glenn McCarron]

Today I am preparing for the final cuts in the 3rd generation. My board has remained at 1 1/16 thickness so I am happy with that.





I have re-adjusted my sled to the 35degrees.



Now I have plotted my cuts but I've come up with a bit of an issue in that I am only getting 7 slices. So I have asked Lloyd to clarify if I have misinterpreted something or if I didn't glue up enough material. I do have an extra set of strips.

 

[Lloyd Johnson]

I wanted to make sure that my calculations for lineal inches for a complex design are correct. I did this by NOT using Lamination PRO. Instead, I drew everything in SketchUp and then recreated the Lamination PRO workflow using drawing tools.
The parameters I used were 7/8" cut of the laminated board at 15 degrees. For the 2nd generation I used 25 degrees and for the 3rd generation I used 35 degrees. My target was to get 6 repeating units (12 3rd generation strips as each strip contains one eagle).

I worked forward to get to the final design and then I worked backwards to see how many of the prior strips were necessary from the prior generation.

The good news is that if you go to Lamination PRO with the above geometry, and advance to the final eagle image and specify 6 Repeating Units and click the Details button, it says that you need 57.15" (I rounded up from 57.149"). SketchUp's result: 57.149". Whew! The trigonometry that went into this calculation is scary and I'm glad it is correct, because I could not, and would not attempt to do it again. It might have helped if I had ever had a trigonometry class. I would have used the forumlas from Laminated Designs in Wood, the fabulous book by Charles Rannefeld, but they were seriously wrong.

The really good news is that it takes about an hour to draw this in SketchUp, but about 20 seconds in Lamination PRO. :->

 

[Glenn McCarron]

As I mentioned in my previous post I wasn't sure if I would make my 8 eagles. As it turns out I had looked at the linial dimension required on Generation two instead of Generation Three. I will try cutting the eagles apart today and hopefully will end up with the 8 required. The bad news is there is no leeway for error or to have an extra eagle. Lesson learned.

Again Lloyd has gone above and beyond in assisting me with this project. I am envious of his abilities to model things in Sketchup.

 

[Glenn McCarron]

The Eagles are now flocking together. Glue-up is next then slice the heads off. I have one that the head is very small so I will have to improvise that one or make them all match.

This shows how I came up with the right place to crosscut. I drew a line from the centre of the tail on each Eagle then basically cut in the centre of that area.



My convocation of Eagles.

 

[Lloyd Johnson]

Glenn, I'm sure you've inspired others to give this a try and I couldn't be more pleased about that. You've shown that you don't need special equipment or years of experience. You just need attention to detail and a good workflow process.
You have both in spades.

 

[stuart johnson]

Glenn, I'm starting to see how you construct the eagles. It is going to take a lot more though before I'll be ready to give it a try. Keep the pictures and descriptions coming.

 

[Glenn McCarron]

Stuart I had a big problem seeing how to get the Eagles initially. I ended up printing the pattern on paper and taking the scissors to it before I finally had that aha moment. I very much enjoy turning on my lathe but I'm not one to throw on a chunk of wood and see where it takes me. For that reason these laminations really appeal to me for the planning and execution of the piece. I still see spots where I can improve on my process and alignment and in this case I need to go back once again and see how I clipped the one head so small but I will improvise and make heads.

 

[Lloyd Johnson]

Here is the bandsaw jig I referred to as a possible solution for making the rough inside diameter on the bandsaw instead of on the lathe. Since all of the pressure in turning the inside radius is outward, it puts pretty good stress on the ring. The first drawing is just to provide some dimensions based on the width of the segments of 5-1/4" As you can see by the drawing, the two edges of the outside of the segment travel along the path of the 7" diameter. You can either push it all the way through or you can push it half way, pull it back, flip it over and do the other half.

Anyway, you may or may not find this useful, but I use it all the time when it is necessary or helpful to make a circular cut on the bandsaw.
Lloyd