a small Mesquite turning – I was playing with the “extra wood” on the end of a turning before I pared it off. To join this in a mouses house or dollhouse kitchen, I have a couple attempts at micro bowls, not quite finished, and too small for a Cheerio.

possibly fated to become a pendant for a necklace, ornament for the tree, or something for one of the teeny “shelves” of an old printers drawer.

One of my “someday” projects is to make a guitar… Not that I have to wait to make it, per se, but it would make more sense if I could actually play it by the time I finish. So rather than keep thinking it’ll be a someday project, I decided to start small

Two ply for added strength. Walnut on one side, cherry on the other. The hardest part was sanding it with almost nothing to hold onto! I did manage to get off all the glue squeeze out without deforming the overall shape too much.

Intentionally left unfinished. As it will surely get a nice patina from being manhandled, and any finish on the business end would suffer much abuse.

So, rather than still saying “someday”… I’ve taken out my “low milage” acoustic guitar I got (way) back in college, and have started taking lessons! I don’t expect this pick to last half as long as it takes me to get around to building my own guitar… but at least I’m moving forward!

Not about to turn another simple oak stopper (right on the heels of another one)… unless theres something remarkable about it.

This oak sure must have grown under tremendous stress. I’m calling it “figured oak” though that might not be the proper terminology. (Maple has varying degrees and descriptions, some other woods seem to have less so)

It’s not a burl (I got it off the firewood pile, courtesy of my father-in-law. It didn’t travel far before I began milling it into something fairly rectangular.) But there is surely a lot of figure in the grain.
It might be hard to tell in these pictures, but the grain is “squiggly” on the quarter sawn faces, almost like it was crushed vertically. Not apparent on the face grain.

Just to compare it against yesterdays oak stopper (on the right).

I’ve already made a couple stoppers with this wood. (And I think I might have traded some of it with a fellow LJ, either in the traveling pen blank/kit box from a few years back, or for something more exotic (to me) from across the country.)

This really shows off the squiggliness of the grain.

(third from the left) – I put this stopper in the gallery already, but lately I’ve come to think that simpler shapes with very interesting or showy woods are probably better.
K.I.S.S., right?

Ever since I started this latest batch of stoppers, I’ve been eyeing this little block of Oak. Not big enough for much else, rift sawn with a couple different colors in it, and plenty of ray fleck. (hard to tell in some of these pictures – oh how I miss having photoshop.)

After a run of different woods than from the, well, woods around here,… I figured it was time for a little local flavor.

More to the point, I’m getting a new batch of salable projects ready for the gallery, plus a little backlog for the following shipment. ALSO doing what I can to get the shop cleaned up a bit. and in very little time devoted to that, I’ve already moved out a carload of well seasoned firewood to my sisters house (and came home with a new (to me) scroll saw!.. I also have a significantly cleaner space than I ever had in the past six months. Is that really floor space?! It’s also nice to get out in the shop in defiance of the weather. Last year I just pretended the shop didn’t exist… it worked for a while, then I got really antsy. So far, a radiant quartz heater, new sock liners for my boots, and layers of sweatshirts and fleece are keeping me perfectly comfortable.

The “week” so far, yes its a bunch of the same (but when the gallery sells stoppers, and asks for more. Well…

(is the “instant gratification” of the lathe ruining me for other projects?… well, I suppose I’ll take what I can get when the days are short and the temps are very LOW. Still not cold enough yet to get me to throw in the towel!
But I am running low on stopper hardware. Something else will be on looming on the horizon very shortly!

My first time turning this wood, I thought it might end up looking like Oak when I was done… despite the log being a bit tanner with, well not chatoyance per-se, but something of a “satin” finish even in raw lumber form.

This turned easily enough, but it wouldn’t turn smoothly, so a fair amount of sanding was called for. Even 400 grit left scratch marks, so I had to turn off the lathe, and go back and sand with the grain by hand from 150 up to 600. THEN I could take it from 600 to 1000 to give it a nice glass smooth finish. Even with all the extra time finishing, it was nice to head out to the shop (at dinner time) and within half an hour go from log to finished project. A far cry from all the false starts yesterday!

So I looked around the shop for anything that was big enough, crack free, and ready to turn. I spied this Juniper log (Also from Texas I just realized) hiding in a couple Osage Logs. Hmm… Nothing odd about almost all these stoppers being Texan, save for the fact that I’m up in New Hampshire.

SO anyhow, this was about as soft and easy to turn as they come. A far cry from the ebony for sure. This did need a lot more sanding than all the other stoppers this go round too. Up to 1000 grit, wet and dry just to eliminate all the marks from the rougher grits (starting at 220 isn’t normally considered rough, is it?)

I am impressed with the complete lack of checking in this log (or was it a branch?). The top of the stopper shows that it is clearly cut from a branch or small trunk – which belies the plywood-esque appearance of the sides…. But I’m not really sure if I like how the grain looks on the sides. So to that end I’ve assembled this stopper for its photo op, BUT haven’t glued it together yet. We’ll see how the coming days go before I commit this one to the gallery.
I have already sold one cut from the same log :

(the one on the right)

BUT I’ll still have to sleep on it. My wife and daughter like it. Maybe it’ll grow on me. I’m pleased that I was able (after a few false starts, and with nothing prepared, to turn out a finished project – keeping my streak of projects going (maybe I really am doing 30 projects in 30 days after all… but still don’t want to admit it)…

Good for barbecuing… and looks good sitting atop a wine bottle. Another one of my favorite woods, very hard, but turns so smooth and precious stone like. This piece has a little heartwood and a little sapwood making for one nice looking – almost cork sized stopper.

I had a couple of mahogany blanks prepped to turn, but apparently drilling and tapping the blank made for a loose fit. I guess that wood is a little to soft or weak for that. I’m sure I can come up with a solution to that with a superglue treatment prior to tapping (or re-tapping) … but until then, I grabbed this block and started from scratch to turn out this beauty. Certainly did not have the same problem with tapping this hard wood.

Quite literally the twin (fraternal, not identical obviously) of the one I posted the other day. Both are cut from the same block – which is the other half of the block of first Bubinga stopper I made a few years back. So then are they twins from within a set of triplets? Whatever.

Anyhow… I had prepped this block the other day, and set out to make something equally nice, but not similar to the other one – as I am slowly filling up a box to send off to the gallery I’m selling some work in. I’m trying to mix it up, and offer up a nice variety… all the while working on defining what my style might be. (That is if letting the wood speak for itself isn’t enough)

This will be the last of the Bubinga projects as I am (faster than I would like) working through some of the great blanks I’ve acquired through sale, trade or the generosity of fellow Lumberjocks. – I do have a small tree worth of Peach that came down in my front yard in a freak October blizzard. Plus some of the neighbors apple trees that suffered a similar fate. Talk about local lumber!… but it’s still quite wet, so I carved out a spot in the shop to hide that in to dry for now. But I did notice that some of the Ash and Civil War era maple from our last house I’ve been hanging onto is nice and dry. Hardly exotic, but cool in their own right.

I’m really like getting back into the practice of turning daily. My sharpening skills are getting better again, I’ve streamlined the set up around my lathe a little… plus it’s nice to have something to show at the end of a visit to the shop, no matter how short. (Today was about 50+ degrees out) projected to be the warmest day of the coming week or so. Practically balmy, by recent weather averages. I didn’t even turn on the radiant quartz heater just behind me.

Chess, I wood love some.

Often times when playing around on the lathe I’ll let the wood (cracks or voids and/or errant chisel marks) dictate what a piece wants to be. For this stopper – Holly, the first time I’ve ever used it, I was more focused on what I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want this almost pure white wood to look like a snowman or a chefs hat… then it started taking on the form of a rook.

Rather than fight it, I went with it. and it came together surprisingly easy. A nice wood to work. I normally like medium to darker woods with interesting grains. This cut very well, and surprisingly cleanly. It chipped a bit when I was squaring up the bottom to drill and tap for the mandrel, so I was worried, but there were no issues at all – just lots of almost pure white ribbons. I did use clean sandpaper to avoid discoloration from the dust from other woods. I sanded up to 600 grit as the 220 and even 320 left marks in the wood. Now it’s smooth as glass, only finished with bowling alley wax to try to maintain the pureness of the wood.