My second passion after software engineering is woodwork. After a hard day sat in front of a computer with not much to show for my labours, it is refreshing to be able to work with a real material and produce something tangible.
My latest effort was this dish:
It’s not a great photo, at some point I shall make an effort to take a better one…
This was an experiment in two ways. First I wanted to turn a dish, but coming by a block of something big enough and properly dried is not so easy (without spending money). However I did have a length of planed/squared oak from a previous project making a dressing mirror.
Having read about segmented turning, where you glue together blocks of pretty coloured woods to achieve beautiful effects, I figured if that works, then gluing multiple blocks of the same kind might be a way to get the size of block I’m interested in using what I had laying around.
So I cut my oak into 3 sections, and glued them with normal white PVA glue, and left them clamped tight over night.
Then I used a small faceplate chuck to let me turn the outside shape, and bottom, which is where we get to the second part of the experiment, I turned a small recess on the underside to fit my expanding chuck jaws. This is the first time I’ve used the expansion capability of my self centring dakota chuck to do anything, so I was pretty pleased that all went smoothly. (It is much more normal for something unexpected to cause me major grief trying new things)
The finished product is not too bad, the finish could be much nicer. I believe my chisels should be sharper as the end grain was not cutting too cleanly, and I wasn’t able to get a completely smooth finish. However I use it as a small dish for putting loose change in and other bits and bobs, and it is fine for that purpose.