Wood Working project

Good Morning Everyone,

Well I got up early and went down to the shop and worked a while on the bowl. A lot of the cracking has shrunk and two cracks have largely disappeared. But the two large visible cracks are still there.

I decided to continue the shaping in spite of the cracking so here are more process photographs from todays work session. Well just have to see what happens with the cracking.


Ok here we go:

The exterior shape of the bowl is my focus today. As Im not planning on adding any exterior adornment to the bowl, the shape of the bowl absolutely has to be spot on for it to look good. I also want the shape to emphasize the grain patterns in the wood as well and also to serve as a "canvas" for the wood colors. So I did just a little cutting today and then I stopped so I could look at it and think about it more.

Here are the photos:

Here is the bowl from yesterday. It has a good overall shape and Ive cut away the pith of the tree. But you can see on the second photo the large cracks that Im concerned about:



Here Ive placed the bowl between centers. This helps to stabilize the bowl and dampens any vibration that occurs from it spinning:



Ive also drawn two concentric circles on the top of the bowl. These prompt me to stop turning at certain points and to take a critical look at the shape periodically:


This is the bowl after about 5 minutes of turning. Note that the top is narrower at this point than it was to begin with:



That damn crack is still visible:


Ive just about reached the first circle in the bowl:


Ive decided to stop working on the exterior of the bowl and hollow it out a little bit. This might help the  cracking some by releasing the wood fibers and allowing them to spring out a little and thus close some of the larger cracks. It also helps me to imagine what the bowl might wind up looking like. And it has to be hollowed out eventually!

Since Ive now moved into the interior of the bowl, the tools that I will be using will be the same general shape as the roughing gouge but much narrower. Spinning the wood sets up a lot of centrifugal force in the bowl blank and hollowing it can interrupt this and cause the bowl to come off the lathe suddenly. A large tool like a roughing gouge will very often cause this. A narrow tool, much less so.
In the photograph is my 3/8 inch Sorby bowl gouge and I use this a lot too:



 This photo shows how the hollowing is progressing. I cut from the periphery to the center and at an angle and you can see this in the center of the bowl:



Here is the bowl at present. Im not sure if this should be the final shape or not. Ill think about this during the day today and possibly do more turning and posting this evening:


While Im mulling all this over, my new Mora knife has arrived and I think Ill try roughing out a spoon with it later today. Here is a photo of the knife and some potential spoon wood below:




See you later,

VW

Door Update

Im just finishing off the door project and will have the last few coats of finish on by Sunday. I thought Id show the process from earlier this week when I finally got around to the scroll detail underneath the window.
















To begin, I worked off of the pattern I took from an original door example in the neighbourhood and made a template. I only make a half template so theres no discrepancies between the two sides.















I attached it to the blank, carefully tracing the pattern and then flipped it over to establish the opposite profile.














With the profile nicely traced with some heavy pencil lines I can be begin the sawing. I mentioned I ordered the new bow-saw blades from Tools for Working Wood, so having a nice set of fresh blades made this process pretty straight forward. The coarse blade was used to establish the main shape and then I switched over to my medium blade to get into the tight areas of the scroll.
















From here it was time to fair out the saw cuts and that was done with an array of rasps, riflers and files. What ever works right? This shaping took a few hours and then another couple of hours sanding. Admittedly, wood carving is something I dont do alot of so the tight spots on the inside of the scroll were a real challenge.














The saw cuts were there and made the rasp work fairly easy but to get into this tiny little spaces was a little frustrating to say the least. Tiny little pieces of sandpaper wrapped around little pieces of dowel and sanding fids finally brought the oak where I wanted it. I dont have any really good rasps like the Auriou line or the TFWW saw makers rasps but if I ever do a project like this again then Ill definitely pick some up before attempting this kind of work.

















In this last shot you can see where the scroll lives in relation to the window sill and with a bit more fine sanding and tweaking Ill call this part done. The panels and window details all have three coats of finish at this point and the top rail assembly as well as the mid-locking rails are all glued up. The only thing left is to take the door upstairs to glue the stiles onto the sides and then add these decorative elements.
Cheers!