I recently finished this cholla and resin knife. The story of how it came to be is below the fold.

After pouring some resin to make cholla pen blanks, I had some prepared cholla left over, and made a mold from a couple chunks of tubafor to cast a handle. Once that had cured, I rough-turned it on the lathe to get it more or less handle-shaped.

Since the tang of the knife blade I was planning to use is a somewhat complex shape, I simplified it to a series of steps. The widest portion was a 7/16 inch hole, then a narrower portion with a 5/16 hole, then the smallest portion with a ⅛ inch hole. But because I don’t want an unsupported drill-bit going down the middle of a hole possibly getting misaligned, I started with the smallest, and drilled the ⅛ inch hole roughly five inches deep (I have a 6 inch long drill bit for just this sort of task), then drilled a short ¼ inch hole for the wider bit of the tang, followed by the 5/16 inch hole for all but the last inch, which was drilled with the 7/16 inch hole.

When I was done with that, the blade could drop into the hole in the center of the handle, and was relatively supported most of its length. Knowing that the most stress would be at the end of the handle where the knife enters it, I planned on putting on a ferrule or bolster, using some brass tubing I have on hand. I turned the end of the knife handle down until that just fit.

Next was an insert. I have some small pieces of brass that a friend milled holes into which slip over the tang of these knife blanks, so I prepared one of those to fit inside the round tubing. Once everything fit correctly, I placed the ferrule on the tang of the blade, poured epoxy into the hole in the handle, and carefully slid the knife blade in place. A bit of epoxy oozed out, but I was using slow-setting epoxy, so I had plenty of time to wipe it up.

Once the epoxy cured, I removed the blade and handle from the lathe chuck and started to shape it into a handle using spokeshaves, rasps, files, and a carving knife.

I continued shaping the handle, using finer tools, then sanded it using 60, 120, 220, and then 400 grit sandpaper. I applied the first coat of finishing oil, let it cure, and evaluated my work.

I needed to make a few minor tweaks to the shape to make it comfortable in my hand, so I made those, and then began finishing the handle.

In all, I think I used 7 or 8 coats of finishing oil, rubbing the handle with 0000 steel wool before each coat to smooth out any imperfections.

I started preparing the sheath at this point, first making an insert from pine to protect the sheath from the knife. This is a traditional Scandinavian way of making a knife sheath, and I think it gives me a good result.

Next up is shaping the leather to the knife. I do this by soaking the leather in water, and then wrapping it around the knife and insert and letting it dry while clamped in place. The leather will take the shape of the knife, and marks from the clamps give me a good guide for where to punch the holes for the stitching.

Once the leather dried, I cut holes for a belt-loop, dyed the leather yellow, then punched holes for the stitches and stitched it up with red thread.

Once stitched, I trimmed the leather down to the final dimensions, then chamfered and burnished the edges, re-dyed any spots I had missed, and applied a coat of Resolene®︎ to protect the leather. Done.

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So… a week and an half ago, just getting over the flu I’d had for two weeks, I decided I needed a second wooden spatula in the kitchen. So I made one from cherry. And broke it when I put in the inlay of ash which was just a hair too big.

The cherry spatula is 3 inches wide. The maple ones are 3½ inches wide. The blades vary in length from 3 to 4 inches.

Then I made five more from maple because I figured I could do better. I had planned to get four from a 12/4 x 7 inch x 20 inch chunk of maple, but after cutting the first two out, I realized I could get three from the thickness I had. And if the board were 9 inches wide, I could probably get nine blanks from a 20-22” long piece. But anyway.

Roughed them all out on the bandsaw, changing blades way too often. Had a ¾” 2/3 tpi hook blade for ripping / resawing out each spatula shaped piece from the 12/4 board, then a ¼” 16 tpi blade for cutting out the shape.

From there, the blanks went into the carving vise, and I dialed in the shape with spokeshaves. I used the large and small HNT Gordon shaves, as they both have tight enough mouths that I can work the “wrong way” on the grain and still not get bad tear-out.

On a few of the spats, I used the belt sander to flatten the back of the blade, but generally I did that with the large shave. I think the two with the worst blades were ones I cut with the tension too low on the resaw blade.

Carving was mostly done with a 45°︎ V tool palm-gouge. I think it’s 3mm wide. I also used a #3x6mm and a #2x12mm on the blue and yellow spat. The plum painted ones just got lines carved with the v-tool and then I made some thin plum milk-paint and painted it into the lines.

#woodworking #batchProduction

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The bowl was made from a crotch in a juniper tree with a large bark inclusion where the branch and trunk had partially grown together. Wacky grain, multiple different bits of heartwood, and all the sorts of things that make for a pretty result if you can keep the bowl from exploding on the lathe.

Finish was a few coats of Tried and True Varnish Oil, followed by Birchwood Casey TruOil gunstock finish which I used when the 24-hour wait for the T&T to cure felt like it was going to take forever.

I really like working with flawed wood like this and seeing what I can do with the wood and resin, but it was almost a month in progress, which feels like FOREVER when people keep asking, “is it done yet?”

Got the wall thickness down around ¼ inch (6 mm), but any thinner would have meant waiting even longer for the epoxy to cure and a hidden crack in the bottom of the bowl probably would’ve let go if I’d kept turning.

#bowl #woodTurning #resin #juniper

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This is a vase I turned from a chunk of Bradford Pear. I wanted to try a round-bottomed vase, without thinking about how I would hold it upright once it had something in it.

Turning the vase went pretty well. And once I had it turned I had the idea of having a sort of halo holding up the vase. Then, thinking about how I'd hold the halo, I came up with the current design, using some sticks through a halo, cradling the vase.

So I got busy and mounted a hexagon of live oak on a sacrificial face plate, and turned a wooden donut on the lathe.

Then I drilled holes for the legs, and used the offcuts to make three live-oak legs, which I painted black and finished, then glued into the wooden donut, then finished that with some spray-lacquer.

I placed the base against the vase and pencil-marked where the legs hit. I drilled shallow holes with a spoon bit and slightly rounded the tops of the legs to match. Not a perfect match, but close enough.

I then finished the vase with some carving, some enamel paint, and multiple coats of spray lacquer. It's slightly more matte than I was hoping, but I think overall it's good.

Once everything was finished, I poured some black-tinted epoxy into the inside of the vase to make it waterproof. I really need to get an old bbq rotisserie motor one of these years so I don't have to hand-rotate a piece to get an even coating on the inside of it, but for this one, it was hand-work. Then a little more 5-minute epoxy to hold the legs and the bottom of the vase together and it was complete.

#woodworking #vase #legs #woodturning #art

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I’m fairly pleased with the result. I intentionally left a live edge on the bowl, and I think it adds something. My sweetie is less sure about that, pointing out how the bowl would be no good for soup.

Thanks for the wood swap, Nathan! This was a fun one to work.

#woodworking #bowlTurning

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The first box is Russian olive from La Capilla Hops Farm in La Cienega, New Mexico. We buy greens from Shawn and Kevin nearly every week, and when Kevin learned that I did woodworking, he offered me some Russian olive. It tends to crack a lot as it dries, but I milled one log into small lumber, and then filled the cracks with epoxy with a blue pigment in it.

The box is dovetailed together and has a top of citrus wood from Arizona. The bottom is more Russian olive. There are ash inserts inside the box which serve to align the top and hold it in place. The box is finished with seven to ten coats of Tried and True Varnish Oil, and then a coating of carnauba wax to give it a nice shine.

The pen within the box is a pen made from cholla from our yard in Eldorado at Santa Fe filled with a resin with purple pigment in it. The metal on the pen has a gunmetal finish, which I thought worked nicely with the purple resin.

The second box is made from Rocky Mountain Juniper, harvested near Taos, NM. A fairly large knot and bark inclusion have been filled with resin with a blue pigment, which really stands out against the almost purple reddish-brown juniper. Again, the box is dovetailed, but this time with a juniper lid which is hinged. The corners of the box are covered with citrus feet, and the lift for the lid is also made from citrus.

The bottom of this box is granadillo, which has a nice brown color that worked well with the juniper. The lid is held shut by a magnet in the lid which engages with two small magnets embedded in the front of the box. The box is finished with seven to ten coats of Tried and True Varnish Oil and a coat of carnauba wax.

The pen within the box is also made with juniper, though this time from our yard in Eldorado. The metal hardware is gold and chrome, which work well with the reddish juniper.

#woodworking #penTurning

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I built a screen for our fireplace recently, and am fairly happy with the result. The screen is for times when we’re not using the fireplace, since it looks dirty, and when the wind gusts, sometimes the damper blows open, and then we get a cold wind into the living room. This also greatly reduces the noise from wind blowing across the top of the chimney.

Two years ago, we got the front of our fireplace painted by a local artist. It’s a very nice result, but especially with that fancy paint-job, we wanted something that would look better than the fire-stained firebox.

The screen has a few features that are unique.

The hearth sits a couple inches above the floor of the firebox, as is typical. This provides a lip which I use to keep the bottom of the screen from sliding forward.

I cut a lip and curved edges on a board to sit on the lip of the hearth, and then built the frame up from there.

The frame is walnut, and around the back edges of it, I’ve put a three-layer-thick roll of felt, which can lean against the painted front of the fireplace without damaging it. The felt is simply stapled in place, first the innermost layer, then the entire roll is stapled right next to the MDF backer, which should prevent the staples from damaging the paint on the fireplace.

The center of the frame is filled with a piece of MDF, which gave me a support for the juniper “rays” and the citrus-wood “sun.” They are simply glued to the MDF backer.

The juniper rays are all of different thicknesses. Rather than mill them all down to the same thickness, I intentionally left some of them thick so I would have more visual interest in the surface of the screen. The rays are all thinned down to roughly a quarter inch where the central sun sits, glued onto the rays.

And finally, the completed screen wanted to tip forward due to the distribution of weight in it and the uneven hearth, so I added a couple feet to the front, which I glued in place only after everything else was completed, adjusting the angle of the feet to hold the top of the screen tight against the fireplace.

The finish is tung oil, followed by a few coats of shellac (between four and nine, depending on which part of the screen), followed by three-five coats of Tried and True Varnish Oil. I thought about using a more traditional varnish, but the difficulty of keeping that dust-free in my shop convinced me to use the slower, but more friendly oil varnish.

That’s all. It was about a month from cutting the first frame section to setting the completed screen in place on the hearth, but I received the juniper from a friend almost three years ago, and have been thinking and sketching designs for most of the time since then.

#woodworking #project

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I finished another cholla and resin lamp this morning. Started pouring the resin for this in March or April, so it went somewhat quicker than previous lamps.

I’m using a solid pigment in the resin on this one, rather than translucent dyes, which gets a different effect. I like it, but I really want more swirly effects along the boundaries, which is going to require getting fancier about my pours.

That said, there are still some very cool effects in the resin, especially where I went back to fill in bits that had bubbles in earlier pours. I also like the more random arrangement of the cholla in this one. I basically just poured some chunks into a cup, shook them down, and started pouring, rather than carefully arranging the cholla first.

#lamp #cholla #resin #woodworking

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I made another touch control nightlight over the course of the past few months. The body is cholla and resin. The base is birch, and the top is sapele. It’s a nice red glow at its brightest, and barely noticeable at its dimmest, but it will last for over 80 hours on a charge at that brightness.

One of the things I found was that in dry weather, a larger touch-sensor is too sensitive, and will turn on with no touch sometimes. So this lamp uses a much smaller sensor which seems to work great, unless your skin is really dry. If that’s the case, put on some lotion or lick your finger.

The lamp is a little under 7 inches tall, and a little over 3 inches in diameter, and the guts are taken from a Lanterna lamp from Lee Valley.

#woodworking #cholla #lamp #resin

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Got some Russian olive from a friend last Saturday. This bowl came out of one of the pieces. There are two cracks that wanted to come apart as I was turning it, and the shape was largely dictated by another crack that did come apart (and which put a dent in the ceiling of my shop).

The lid was part of the chunk that came off. It had a branch near the middle that had rotted, so I filled that with epoxy and stuck on a handle turned from another offcut.

Mostly turned with a bowl gouge, but I also used a few scrapers, a carbide turning tool, a skew, and a bedan. Finished with homemade friction finish plus some wax.

#project #bowl #woodturning

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