ridgewaystudios.orgMaker blog
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These turned pears responded well to a bit of Goldfinger enhancement.
Wooden fruit is a very traditional product of the turning shops in England. It provides a wonderful pallet for me to collect samples of finishes that I use.
Tubes of dubious origin and doubtful usefulness!
Aspen cut in the face grain orientation on the lathe. This orientation does not present aspen to its best advantage, so there is a good opportunity for fun with texture and color.
To 9″ tall
Inspired by my collection of Richard Raffan wooden tubes, which I use all the time
Our friend and teacher, Nick Agar (turningintoart.com), is now selling a kit of supplies to make his signature style of Viking sunset bowls.
I have used the colors and metallic finish on this tap handle for that bartender who likes a full-bodied beer in the swashbuckling Viking style. Yes, I know, they drank mead, but I think it must be a somewhat heavy version of a honey wheat lager….
When a woodturner speaks of a box, she means a small cylindrical lidded form with a tight-fitting lid. For this series, I use buttons as knobs.
The box on the left is in the style of Warren MacKenzie’s boxes, with two (clay) buttons to line up the lid with the base. His, however, are thwacked into five-sided boxes. I could do something similar with the sander, just not this time.
All of the button boxes will include an assortment of buttons when I get ready to sell them.
Lace bobbins work best when each one is distinctive, so that the lacemaker can identify the order of placement of the threads. This suits me very well, because I have lots of different woods, beads, and styles of turning to use!
Sadly, bobbin lace is a skill endangered by our short attention spans. It requires ‘prickings’ to guide the process, a pillow to work upon, and beautiful lacemaking threads. Perhaps it will experience a revival for jewelry or wire art, as macrame has in recent years.
My Aunt Jo had a collection of small ladies’ footstools before 1960. This is my ‘revival’ of that memory. It’s not exactly ‘mid-century,’ but the square shape gives a nice energy to the piece.
Dennis Liggett turned the cherry legs. The frame uses pockethole joinery, learned from Greg Paige at Paige Woodwoorking in Union Star, Missouri.
I chose a bold upholstery fabric and a 2″ cushion for this 10 x 10″ square footstool. I am working on more styles and sizes of tops, including one to display a single quilt block. We will also sell these ready-to-cover for needleworkers. We will have several ready for the September Studio Tour and our fall selling season.
In September 2015, Dennis and I had a booth at the Rocky Mtn Woodturners Symposium in Loveland, CO, right next to Northwest Figured Woods. It was impossible to resist their beautiful maple burls. The little bowl in their July 9th newsletter is made from some of the wood I bought from them.
When I go to woodturner heaven, I will only turn maple burls. I hope that heaven is one of their customers, too.
For a lot of woodturners, pens are their introduction to the craft.
I have made up a few from kits, but it seemed like 90% fussing with assembly, and 10% working on the lathe. Our Club president challenged all of us to bring a writing instrument to the May meeting, so I looked for a way to reverse those percentages. I found ‘stick pens’ that use the guts from a Bic pen. This definitely keeps the parts budget low, and the user can replace the ink cartridge any time with another Bic pen’s parts.
The first challenge is to find a drill bit long enough. Luckily, Dennis Liggett always has the tool that I need for the job. This time, he even drilled the holes.
These three are made from osage orange (‘hedge’ to a mid-westerner). It is a straight, fine-grained wood for turning. Some of the beautiful color mellows to a brown over time. Nature’s improvement on plastics, and now, mine, too.
Woodturners have been making fruit for over a hundred years, but we don’t see much of it in the US. When we went to England, the turners made collections of fruit in different kinds of exotic wood scraps. That way, the bowl was like a memory palace for their work.
I’ve been experimenting with different color methods–fabric paint, fabric dye, acrylics, and milk paints. Here’s a snapshot of my progress so far. The pomegranate took a bit of carving, too.
These Clock Blocks will be our feature item for the Kay & Dennis Studio Tour in September. They start as circular designs made on the wood lathe and airbrushed with color. The big piece is then cut into squares. We add zentangles®, bronze paint, and the clock insert.
The blocks are a terrific desk accessory that can be rearranged, or decorated further with upholstery nails, stickers, or drawings on the ‘plain’ sides.