Chris Billman's Blog

Usually I want to spend every spare second in my shop working with wood. But every once in a while I get in a lull where I feel like I need a break. It usually doesn't last more than a couple days, and then I'm re-geeked about woodworking.

I'm in a lull right now. I think I'm coming to the end of my recent turning affliction. It might be time to ramp up another flatwork project. Something challenging that forces me to learn a technique I haven't used before. What to do, what to do....

I added a couple new pics to the bowl page of my website. The wormy mulberry bowl is there as is an english walnut bowl. I also reconfigured the page so that the most recent pics are on top. Before it was oldest on top, newest on bottom, and this forced you to have to scroll all the way down to the end of the page to see the new stuff.

I'm also considering making some sort of gallery with thumbnails on that page. There are quite a few full sized pics there now and I'm concerned about load times for folks still on dial up. One more thing to add to my to-do list.

I had to miss the WoodNet gathering at Hartville Tool last week, but I managed to buy a few odds and ends anyway and have them picked up by a friend.  Nothing grand, mostly a few books and DVDs.

One of the DVDs was about Chip Carving, which is something I've wanted to try for a long time.  I think I might finally buy a knife (can't believe how cheap they are - one of the few remaining bargains in woodworking) and give it a go.  Wayne Barton makes it look easy, but I suspect that's largely to do with his many years of practice.  If I can manage something decent it would make a nice accent to a box or a platter or a picture frame.

There's always more to learn in woodworking.  Like many things in like, once I think I'm half-way competent I start to realize how much I still don't know.

I was finish turning a mulberry bowl last night that had been air drying in the rough since October.  It's a beautiful piece of yellow-ish wood, and it had evidence of worm tracks on one side in the sapwood.  The bowl went fine except for some tearout near the worm holes that I worked though with careful shear scraping and sanding. 

But the big surprise was when I was finishing with Danish oil.  I soaked the worm hole area with a lot of oil so that the dust remaining in the worm holes would harden.  I set the bowl down for the initial coat of oil to soak in, and when I came back to apply another wet coat 15 minutes later I found a brown and white worm flopping around in a puddle of oil.  It seems the worm didn't like the danish oil and it had come out of its track to escape.

It's common to find worms while turning bowls from green lumber, but it's really not a pleasant thing for me to encounter.  It keeps reminding me of the destruction the Emerald Ash Borer is causing in all the ash trees in my area (and specifically most all the ash trees on my small wooded lot).  So I didn't mind squishing the worm from the mulberry one little bit.  Hopefully there aren't more worms living in my recently finished bowl...

Over the last week I got enough shop time to complete three more bowls.  Pics are now uploaded to my bowl page.

I'm getting happier with my forms and with the pictures as well.  I've made some tweaks to my picture setup by adding some rip-stop nylon as diffuser material, and it seems to help even out the lighting.  I'm still having some problem with tearout on the endgrain, but I'm now more comfy with shear scraping and getting and keeping the tools sharp, so it's not a huge disaster of an issue like it once was.

Tonight I was working on finishing a roughed bowl, and things got fun. The bowl was about 12" in diameter with a heavily undercut rim (ooooh - artistic!). I knew when I roughed it out that I had cut the wall a bit thin near the undercut (learning how to use my hollowing tools ya see) so I was being cautious not to remove more material than necessary. Well, the bowl had deformed such that there wasn't enough wall thickness remaining, and the top undercut rim is now a big maple doughnut that's good for nothing.

So instead of working on an artsy bowl I turned it into a ring holder for my wife. I've had one of those things on my "to do" list for several years, and there have been several of them posted to WoodNet lately, so when I had a much smaller bowl to work with the ring holder jumped to the head of the "to do" list right quick. It's turned out nicely, and I hope to have pics posted in a few days.

I really had a great time. The meeting topic was burls, and we had an open discussion about planning turnings from 2 example burls, and we got to slab up the burls into turning blanks and even turn a couple bowls. I ended up turning a cherry burl with the help of two others, and it was a lot of fun. I was on a Oneway 2436 fully tricked out with a full length bed extension and outboard turning setup. What a blast!

I plan to audit one more meeting before formally joining. Their yearly dues are $60 plus a $40 AAW membership, so I want to make sure the club is right for me before signing up. If the next meeting is anywhere near as fun as this one I'll be $100 poorer.

Tonight was the January meeting of the Southeast Michigan Woodworkers. I've been leading the meeting planning and organization for the past three years, and I'm actively trying to get out of that business and give someone else a chance. A few kind souls formed a Planning Committee to determine meeting topics for 2007, and tonight was the first meeting of their doing.

The jist of things is to form three groups and have each group build an end table. The various steps of the projects will be demo'd in the next several monthly meetings. Folks seemed generally pleased with this plan, and there are three teams doing three diverse end tables. I can't wait to see how they progress.

Monday 1/15 was a holiday for us, and that marks the end of a string of holidays running from Nov thru Jan.  No days off on the horizon now until April - ugh.  A 3 day weekend meant a little more shop time than normal, but not too much more since we had some family plans.

I'm still spending time on the lathe (although I'm thoroughly itching for some flat work once again).  I'm continuing to rough out the sugar maple blanks, but I'm also now able to start finish turning some of the blanks that have seasoned.  Last night I did my first blank from the DNA bath, and it turned out well.  It is a closed-form bowl, or I suppose it could be termed a "hollow form" (doesn't that sound so artsy??).  The blank deformed a bit in the DNA, but I had left enough wall thickness so that wasn't a problem.  I'm not sure the deformation was any less with the DNA, but it sure did speed the process as I went from rough out to final turning in 2 weeks.  I'll have a pic posted in a day or two once the finish is buffed. (That reminds me - I really need to improve that bowl page on my web site...)

Earlier in the weekend I finished my first vase form.  I've had an ash branch section in my shop for a few years - it was from one of the first tress I removed from my lot due to the stinkin Emerald Ash Borer.  I finally made something from it, and it gave me a good opportunity to try the newly handled hollowing tools.  Sweet!  I'm not sure the form is all that great, but it was fun to make.  I'll be doing more hollow forms for sure.  I'm waiting for the finish to dry and be buffed before I post pics - should be withing a day or two.

And even earlier than that I made a turned box out of the first section of the ash limb I mentioned above.  The turning went well, but when I was buffing the lid it was grabbed from my hands and smashed against the wall.  After some repair work I'm calling it done.  Pic here.

There's also a new bowl on this page that I made from the cherry limb that's been hanging around for a while.  I only have enough of that wood left for a few small items, and I'm gonna miss having a supply of cherry available.  I'll be on the lookout for more cherry stock for sure.

After my class with David Marks a few months ago I purchased two hollowing turning tools made by Sorby - the Hollowmaster and the Multi Tip Scraper.  Mr Marks demo'd the Hollowmaster, and he mentioned that it was his primary hollowing tool, so I grabbed these things during a 30% off sale.

I've only used them a handful of times since then, but I did notice that the handles were a little short for my liking.  These things can catch easily (esp for a beginner like me), so the more meat to the handle the easier it is to control the reaction from the catch.  Plus Mr Marks had a cool home made handle on his, and who's to argue with that, right?

So I finally got the nerve to remove the factory handles from the tools and turn my own.  The multi-tip's handle came off fairly easily with love taps from a mallet.  But the Hollowmaster handle would not budge, so I had to get a chisel out and show it who's boss.

Turning the new handles was fairly straightforward.  I have a couple pieces of 8/4 maple left over from my Twin Twin Bench (ooh, how I love thee....) so that's what I used for the handles.  The #$!&^ skew chisel caused a few issues (I swear it was the chisel's fault and not mine), but in the end all went well.  They're now nice and long and meaty, and I seem to have much more control with the tools.  Can't wait to use them for real.  Check out a pic here.

I'm a crappy woodworker. Well, I guess maybe I'm a decent "woodworker", but I'm certainly a crappy artist. I can do all the typical joinery that a cabinetmaker needs. I'm ok with finishing. I can build a mean shaker or mission of country piece of furniture.

But I can't design to save my life. Creativity I ain't got. That's why I struggle as a turner. I can turn a utilitarian salad bowl, and I can copy a turned box or a spindle, but I'm not able to come up with an interesting design that's really and truly original. Same story for flatwork.

I'm constantly reading woodworking magazines and books and watching woodworking videos. I've got the "how to" part of woodworking down pat. Where I need to grow is in the creative part. Unfortunately that's probably the hard part.

Where did all this come from? I'm in the middle of reading the Fine Woodworking Design Books (there are 7). I open book 5 and I'm absolutely blown away with a paduk and maple tall chest of drawers on page 12. It is in stunning. It's not of any "style", and it is like nothing I've ever seen. It is really truly beautiful - the dark paduk as the main wood with lighter accents of maple thoughout. I could probably build a close reproduction of this piece; i.e. it's not too far out of my joinery capabilities. But there's NO WAY I would have ever come up with such an amazingly original design. That's depressing, and it's something I need to work on.

A friend on the SEMIWW forum recently pointed out that some of my pieces were all rectilinear - straight flat panels, 90 deg corners, not too many curves, etc. He's right. I'm gonna work on original designs and on incorporating more curves. Resolved: I will strive to become more of an artist.

Turning is often either the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. Tonight was the agony part.

Once in a while things are going well and you're in the homestretch, and the slightest problem snowballs faster than you realize. Tonight I was working on a turned box in walnut and had it about 80% finished. The insides were hollowed, sanded, and finished. The outsides were roughly shaped and I was working to refine the profile. While forming a couple beads to hide the join of the lid and the base I had a wee little catch. When trying to repair the catch the lid came off the base a bit and started to turn off center. Smushed it back on, was smoothing the profile, and before I knew it I had turned off too much wood at the join and turned through the lid into the base.

Ugh.

So I turned off the lathe, cleaned myself off, and came upstairs to relax. That's enough shop time for tonight. Tomorrow is another day.

Last night was garbage night, so I cleaned up the shop of a bunch of shavings and brought them out to the curb. Tonight when I entered the shop it was fairly clean and tidy - a rarity when I'm doing a lot of turning. So I hesitated to make yet another pile of chips and mess the pace up again, but I got over it and got back to work at the lathe.

Tonight I roughed out a really nice bowl of mystery wood. It's some sort of light colored wood with streaks of brown and grey running through it. If the bowl survives the drying and finish turning process it's gonna look great. Can't wait to see it done.

I'm watching Grumbine's second dvd again for the umpteenth time. I tried a square bowl the other night and didn't have much success, so I wanted to pay close attention to that section of his vid. The second time should be a charm (I hope).

It's hard to believe I haven't updated the blog on my woodworking activities since Nov!  Well, here's my attempt to bring things up to date.

Most of the stuff I've been working on have been turnings.  I now have more than a dozen roughed out bowl blanks seasoning in my shop.  They're mostly from the pile of sugar maple logs I scored from a friend in SEMIWW.  Honestly, the grain doesn't look all that interesting yet; it's mostly very pale white with the occasional ambrosia worm track and sometimes an interesting contrast between the darker heartwood.  Once these things are dried there will be a flurry of finished maple bowls to show.  I tried the DNA soaking method on several of the blanks, so (assuming it works as advertised) I should have some finished bowls in a couple weeks.

I also spent some time working on turned birdhouse Christmas tree ornaments (link).  They turned out really nicely and they were a good use of leftover wood chunks from other larger turning blanks.  I've also worked on a couple new turned boxes that are on the final finishing stages.  I should have pics of them online soon.

I'm now reading my way through a bunch of recently purchased FWW backissues.  And I'm also enjoying reading the FWW Design Books (1 thu 7).  These have great pics of finely crafted furniture projects from the 70's, 80's, and 90's.  They're providing many good ideas for future projects, and they're kick-starting the bug to get back to some flatwork.

My next major project is currently up in the air.  I have a couple things on the honey-do list that I may choose from.  They include things like beds for our daughters, more outdoor planters, a hutch for the living room, and (eventually) a full formal dining room set.  We're also discussing finishing some of the space in our basement so that our daughters have a room to store their overflowing toys and we have a space to devote to an entertainment center.  So much to do, so little time....